Listen to Yesterday's Tumultuous Morning Show at KPFA

On Tuesday, laid-off employees at the radio station KPFA in Berkeley commandeered the airwaves and launched into a “renegade” show.

KPFA 94.1 FM, the Berkeley radio station and linchpin of the liberal Pacifica Radio network, plunged again into crisis Tuesday morning when the staff of The Morning Show locked themselves inside a third-floor alternate studio and began broadcasting during the regularly scheduled timeslot.

Their action comes a day after they were fired by Pacifica’s upper management following a protracted labor dispute.

A remarkable scene unfolded at KPFA’s downtown Berkeley offices around 7 a.m., as Morning Show co-hosts Aimee Allison and Brian Edwards-Tiekert bade farewell to their audience from a third-floor studio while Arlene Engelhardt, the Pacifica Foundation executive director, entered the main studio on the first floor to heatedly defend her controversial decision Monday to remove three staffers of the popular morning program. Full article.

Here is an archive of that very unusual and confrontational show.

And here’s a video clip in which a Morning Show producer confronts Engelhardt on-air.

Earlier today on Forum, Michael Krasny talked with Arlene Englehardt and Larry Bensky, former host of KPFA’s Sunday Salon. That show is archived here.

Last week, KPFA’s employee union, CWA Local 9415, filed an unfair labor practices charge with the NLRB against Pacifica related to the layoffs.

• Listen to KPFA live online
• CWA Local 9415 employment contract w/ Pacifica (Section 12 deals with layoff and recall procedures)
• Save KPFA – “seeks to rally progressive support for the station.”