8 minutes
8 minutes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pryor
I wanted to say a few words to encapsulate the career of Richard Pryor but there is way too much.
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American comedian, actor, film director,social critic, satirist, writer, and MC.[19]….
Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities and profanity, as well as racial epithets. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time: …
Pryor’s body of work includes the concert movies and recordings: Richard Pryor: Live & Smokin’ (1971), That Nigger’s Crazy (1974),…Is It Something I Said? (1975), Bicentennial Nigger (1976), Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979), Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982), and Richard Pryor: Here and Now (1983). He also starred in numerous films as an actor, such as Superman III (1983), but was usually in comedies such as Silver Streak (1976), and occasionally in dramatic roles, such as Paul Schrader‘s film Blue Collar(1978). He collaborated on many projects with actor Gene Wilder. Another frequent collaborator was actor/comedian/writer Paul Mooney….
Pryor won an Emmy Award (1973) and five Grammy Awards (1974, 1975, 1976, 1981, and 1982). In 1974, he also won two American Academy of Humor awards and the Writers Guild of America Award. The first ever Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was presented to him in 1998. Pryor is listed at Number 1 on Comedy Central‘s list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians.[23]….
In 1969, Pryor moved to Berkeley, California, where he immersed himself in the counterculture and rubbed elbows with the likes of Huey P. Newton and Ishmael Reed. He signed with the comedy-oriented independent record label Laff Records in 1970, and in 1971 recorded his second album, Craps (After Hours). Two years later, the relatively unknown comedian appeared in the documentary Wattstax (1973), wherein he riffed on the tragic-comic absurdities of race relations in Watts and the nation. Not long afterward, Pryor sought a deal with a larger label, and after some time, signed with Stax Records.[when?][citation needed]….
When his third, breakthrough album, That Nigger’s Crazy (1974), was released, Laff, who claimed ownership of Pryor’s recording rights, almost succeeded in getting an injunction to prevent the album from being sold. ….That Nigger’s Crazy was a commercial and critical success; it was eventually certified Gold by the RIAA[when?] and won the Grammy Award for Best Comedic Recording at the 1975 Grammy Awards….
….Pryor returned to Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, which re-released That Nigger’s Crazy, immediately after …Is It Something I Said?, his first album with his new label. Like That Nigger’s Crazy, the album was a hit with both critics and fans; it was eventually certified Platinum by the RIAA[when?]and won the Grammy Award for Best Comedic Recording at the 1976 Grammy Awards…..
Pryor’s release Bicentennial Nigger (1976) continued his streak of success. It became his third consecutive Gold album, and he collected his third consecutive Grammy ….
The Richard Pryor Show premiered on NBC in 1977 but was canceled after only four episodes probably because television audiences did not respond well to his show’s controversial subject matter, and Pryor was unwilling to alter his material for network censors. During the short-lived series, he portrayed the first African-American President of the United States, spoofed the Star Wars cantina, took on gun violence, and in another skit, used costumes and visual distortion to appear nude.[35]…..
In 1983, Pryor signed a five-year contract with Columbia Pictures for US$40,000,000.[37] This resulted in the mainstreaming of Pryor’s onscreen persona and softer, more formulaic films like Superman III (1983), which earned Pryor $4,000,000; Brewster’s Millions (1985), Moving (1988), and See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989). The only film project from this period that recalled his rough roots was Pryor’s semi-autobiographic debut as a writer-director, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986), which was not a major success….
In 2002, a television documentary depicted Pryor’s life and career. Broadcast in the UK as part of the Channel 4 series Kings of Black Comedy, it was produced, directed and narrated by David Upshal and featured rare clips from Pryor’s 1960s stand-up appearances and movies such as Silver Streak (1976), Blue Collar (1978), Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1978), and Stir Crazy (1980). Contributors included George Carlin, Dave Chappelle, Whoopi Goldberg, Ice-T, Paul Mooney, Joan Rivers, and Lily Tomlin. The show tracked down the two cops who had rescued Pryor from his “freebasing incident”, former managers, and even school friends from Pryor’s home town of Peoria, Illinois. In the US, the show went out as part of the Heroes of Black Comedy series on Comedy Central, narrated by Don Cheadle.[citation needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pryor
This is a shortening of all the praise of him on Wikipedia
http://transom.org/2012/youre-on-the-air/
Nan Rubin may be able to help you.
She was part of a Strategic Process imposed on KPFK in 1986. But Lorenzo Milam’s off-titled Sex in Broadcasting book was the handbook for getting on the air for many years.
My greatest personal satisfaction in a long public broadcasting career has come from building a radio station from scratch. Flipping the switch and filling that empty space on the radio dial with brand new sounds for the very first time — nothing can match it.
I’m close to social security age now, but signing my first station on the air in 1975 was one of the biggest thrills of my life.
My first radio station was WAIF 88.3 FM in Cincinnati, one of a wave of community stations in Atlanta, Madison, Memphis, St. Louis, Tampa and elsewhere that hit the airwaves between 1970 and 1980 as part of the counter-culture and anti-Vietnam War era, guided in part by Lorenzo Milam and Jeremy Lansman’s irreverent station-building guide “Sex and Broadcasting.” We were licensed to Stepchild Radio of Cincinnati, Inc. and our bumper stickers read “Out of the Ordinary Radio.”
Building a radio station takes a serious commitment. First, you have to set-up a non-profit organization so you can legally apply for a broadcast license and also raise money. At the same time, you have to do a technical search to find an open frequency on the FM dial, plus locate a real physical place to put a transmitter and antenna. Then you are ready to fill out an FCC application requesting the frequency, and the FCC sits on it for months while they make sure everything meets their requirements.
In the meantime, you become a community organizer, holding a gazillion meetings to plan station operations, implement decision-making, devise programming schedules, scout out broadcasting equipment and studio locations, and ask people to give you money for a radio station that is just an idea and doesn’t exist yet. You are also holding your breath and hoping no other group has the same idea and applied for the same frequency.
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Not from WBAI.org. Definitely written from a point of view.
Under normal circumstances,Amy Goodman and Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez say, they’d be happy their daily “Democracy Now” show has moved from 9 a.m. to 8 a.m. on WBAI (99.5 FM).
But with WBAI having another of its periodic civil wars, they aren’t so sure.
Before the shift last week, co-hosts Goodman and Gonzalez sent a letter to acting general manager LaVarn Williamssaying that while the station has the right to air the program whenever it wishes, “This decision disturbs us deeply and we urge that it be reconsidered.”
Their concern, they say, involves the fact that moving “Democracy Now” is only one part of larger changes at WBAI, including the dismissal of station manager Anthony Riddle and program director Bernard White.
Critics of Riddle and White charged they had narrowed the station’s appeal, costing it listenership and revenue. White disputes those assertions, and his supporters have launched a campaign to “take back WBAI.”
Goodman and Gonzalez’s letter says firing White “lacked basic human consideration” and expresses concern that the new team is using “Democracy Now” as “a weapon against its opponents.” . . . .
Andrew Leslie Phillips has written a short history of the Pacifica radio network, published below. He is interim general manager of Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley, California.
Phillips is a native of Australia. He spent seven years in Papua New Guinea as a government patrol officer, radio journalist and filmmaker before coming to New York in 1975. He produced award-winning investigative radio documentaries on a wide range of environmental and political issues for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and for Pacifica station WBAI in New York City. He taught journalism, radio and “sound image” as an adjunct professor at New York University for 10 years.
The Pacifica foundation was founded in 1946 by poet and journalist Lewis Hill and a small group of pacifists, intellectuals and experienced radio people. They did not have the same political or economic philosophy but shared a vision which supported a peaceful world, social justice and creativity. ….
FM was a new, technology and Pacifica was backing the future, inventing an entirely new funding mechanism – the theory of listener sponsored radio. . . .
Equality of access to airtime has always been at the center of controversy at Pacifica and community radio everywhere. Most on-air people at Pacifica were not paid until the mid 1990’s. They volunteered and they made money to support the Foundation by pitching their programming on free-speech Pacifica radio. That was the deal. It was a tacit agreement – Pacifica provides opportunity and access whilst producers agreed to pitch and encourage on air pledges. By far the largest percentage of financial support for Pacifica still comes from listener donations.[2]. . . ”
http://www.radiosurvivor.com/2013/08/06/riding-the-waves-at-pacifica-radio-by-andrew-leslie-phillips/
September 16 2015
6:07 minutes
:26 minutes
Richard Wolff explains debacle in Greece
http://uprisingradio.org/home/2015/07/27/dr-richard-wolff-makes-sense-of-the-greek-debacle/
See Uprising’s website http://uprisingradio.org/home/
Professor Engelman is the author of “Friendlyvision: Fred Friendly and the Rise and Fall of Television Journalism,” with an Introduction by Morley Safer (NY: Columbia University Press, 2009) and “Public Radio and Television in America: A Political History” (Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996). His “The Origins of Public Access Cable Television,” Journalism Monographs (No. 123, October 1990), has been translated into Japanese and Portuguese.
Ralph Engelman
LET ME QUICKLY INTRODUCE OUR PANELISTS. TOMORROW, GARRY TRUDEAU WILL RECEIVE THE GEORGE POLK CAREER AWARD. HIS COMIC STRIP HAS ATTAINED THE STATUS OF A GREAT AMERICAN INSTITUTION. FOUR 45 YEARS, HE HAS SPARED NO PUBLIC FIGURE OR ILL-CONCEIVED POLICY IN A UNIQUE SATIRIC APPROACH TO POLITICAL COMMENTARY. HE STANDS ALONGSIDE SUCH LEGENDARY CARTOONIST SUCH AS OUR NEXT PANELIST, JEWELED PFEIFER –JULES FEIFFER. JULES http://www.c-span.org/video/?324923-1/discussion-role-satire |
Published on Sep 9, 2014
The Nobel Peace Prize nominee and holder of 21 honorary doctorate degrees hammers Obama and our consumerist mentality.
“Capitalists in the 1970s realized they no longer needed to pay high wages to American, European and Japanese workers, when they could simply relocate their centers to countries with no wage regulations” -Professor and Economist Richard Wolf
Richard Wolf discusses the history of capitalist resistance from Germany to Greece for KPFK audience members. http://ow.ly/i/8BWOj
Once you’re at youtube the subsequent and related videos present themselves as choices.