Over a year after firing Summer Reese as Executive Director, The Pacifica Foundation has named former 88.7 KUHF Houston General Manager/CEO John Proffitt as her replacement effective Monday, May 11 and will be based at Pacifica’s Berkeley, CA headquarters.
Proffitt spent over twenty-five years at Houston’s NPR affiliate prior to his exit in 2011. Since then he has volunteered as a host and fundraiser at Pacifica’s 90.1 KPFT.
In addition to Houston’s KPFT, Pacifica owns 99.5 WBAI New York, 90.7 KPFK Los Angeles, 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB Berkeley/San Francisco, and 89.3 WPFW Washington DC. The foundation is currently under investigation by the State of California Attorney General’s Office over failures to comply with California law governing nonprofit foundations.
Good Luck!
Pacifica has become so dysfunctional that I wonder if John Proffitt is going to end up presiding over the end of Pacifica Radio.
To say that Proffitt has his work cut out for him may be the radio understatement of all time.
Pacifica Radio will find a way to survive. Cats have nine lives, Pacifica has 1,000 lives.
Where did this come from? I thought Margy Wilkinson just recently took over that position after ousting the previous Executive Director Summer Reese. Oh well, that was several months ago, can’t have that kind of stability at Pacifica now can we? This new guy’s credentials look too good on paper, though. What’s wrong with him?
I would suspect that there are those at Pacifica who will go after Proffitt simply for running an NPR station for 25 years (despite his four years at KPFT), since they consider NPR part of evil capitalist AmeriKKKa. I could see the KTRU kiddies getting on him for being behind Rice selling their station to UH (even if it looks like they’re getting an LPFM signal). And there are just some Pacificistas who just have a problem with professional broadcasters.