The Empire State Building
I'm a bit amazed that I've been able to stay awake long enough to just get to writing up this Web page. I really hope that I'll be posting more up here about this program soon.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday July 8, 2026, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday night of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Good luck.
Since the former General Manager banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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We had two adrenaline junkies getting attention on Wednesday. We were watching the noon news and the station broke in with a chopper shot of the two climbers at the very top of the Empire State Building. That live video ate the entire rest of the news. The coverage lasted for about 40 to 45 minutes and it was all for personal ego gratification. They had a proposal on one of the platforms and that turned out to be performative too. They're already married!
WBAI used to broadcast from the Empire State Building. And then we had to get out of there because we were always behind on the rest. I remember decades ago having to run up there and get the WBAI transmitter cooled down because it was over heating. I think that at about 95° F. it would overheat and shut down safely rather than burn out. I was around in the late night/early morning hours and I was in the Engineering Dept. then and I had to run, and I could run in those days, from 35th St. and 8th Ave. to Empire at 34th St. and 5th Ave. and then I had convince the guard in charge that I needed to get up to the very sensitive floor where all of the transmitters were. I was sort of surprised that I was able to do it. And then I got into the room, I had the key from the Engineering Dept., and I opened the window, which was illegal, and I opened the door to the WBAI transmitter room, which was also illegal, and I fanned air out the window. A couple of years later in the same situation I got up there and found that the window had been replaced by a louvered vent. There was a lot more fanning with a piece of random cardboard I'd found. WBAI stayed on the air both times.
I remember that other WBAI people who had to go up to that transmitter room would eat their lunch up there, going out onto the landing on that level. I think it might have been the 81st floor. Our own Uncle Sidney would sit out on the edge of the low wall that goes around that landing and sometimes he'd sit on that wall and dangle his feet over the edge. One good gust of wind could have resulted in a bad outcome.
I suspect that the security people at the Empire State Building are going to have a bit of a shakeup from this latest publicity stunt. If those two adrenaline junkies had been intent on doing something harmful they'd have easily been able to do it. They were noticed at one point by a pilot flying over Manhattan, and there was a conversation played on that TV news program between a pilot and an air traffic controller about it. I think that the two climbers were not publicly noticed until the TV chopper saw them and reported it on the air, and then someone called the cops. They were hard to see that high up. They were more than a quarter of a mile above the street.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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