Dear Pacifica Supporter –
The short answer is yes.
He resigned as of Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Gary told me he had planned to say goodbye to his many WBAI listeners on that same day’s program.
But that goodbye program was never aired on WBAI.
That day’s Gary Null program was pre-empted – not allowed on air – by General Manager Berthold Reimers and Program director Linda Perry, who were afraid Gary would say something that embarrassed them personally. So they replaced his goodbye program with something else.
Poor Gary. He didn’t even know that WBAI had pre-empted his goodbye program. He didn’t realize, till the next day, that he had, in effect, been talking into a dead microphone; that the thoughts and feelings he wanted to share with his WBAI listeners never reached their ears.
What did Gary plan to say on his goodbye program?
Was he going to reveal why, after 48 years, he abruptly decided to leave WBAI? No, he was not. His reasons involved ethical concerns that might reflect badly on station management and hurt the station. So he was not going to disclose them in public – he never aired the station’s dirty laundry on his programs.
Instead, he planned only to reminisce about the many good times and wonderful experiences he had enjoyed sharing with his audience, many of whom he knew personally and had counseled on health and nutrition at his New York offices or at his Florida and Texas health retreats.
So the fears of WBAI management – that Gary would give them a black eye on his goodbye program – were groundless. He was not going to reveal the reasons that compelled him to leave.
Does that mean you will never find out what those reasons are? No. Gary can be as discreet as he likes, but I don’t have to be. As a former WBAI board member and former director of Pacifica, I know what those reasons are, and have no problem revealing them to you.
(1) Non-delivery of “thank-you” premiums.
Gary discovered that WBAI had not been delivering “thank-you” premiums to many of its listeners who had made donations to the station. Often the premiums did not arrive for months, or even years; sometimes they never arrived at all.
Although Gary had no control over this, thousands of listeners started calling his office to complain, disrupting his staff, delaying his research, impacting his radio show, and interfering with the health counseling he provides on a personal basis (at no charge) to hundreds of people a year. Yet no matter how often Gary asked WBAI’s general manager to stop delaying, or failing to deliver, listener premiums, the station did not stop this practice.
The reason it did not stop was because the money donated by listeners was being diverted to other purposes. Which meant there was no money to buy the premiums and send them to the listeners. Which then resulted in thousands of complaints to Gary. In frustration, Gary would often purchase those premiums from the manufacturer himself (out of his own pocket), and send them to the listeners, who should have received them from WBAI. This has cost Gary hundreds of thousands of dollars; it is also unethical, and possibly illegal for the station. Gary could not, in good conscience, continue to be associated with such practices.
(2) False accusations and personal attacks.
As disturbing to Gary as the non-delivery of premiums was the surprising refusal of WBAI’s general manager to refute the false accusations being made against Gary by a group of Pacifica board members from California (the same ones attempting to sell WBAI) who claimed that Gary was profiting from the use of his books, films and other products as thank-you premiums during the station’s fund drives.
The allegations, of course, were false. Gary never made anything from the station’s use of his products as premiums. WBAI’s general manager knew this, since all profits went to WBAI. This is clearly documented in Gary’s audited financial statement, of which the station has a copy. It is further confirmed by an intensive investigation that I was commissioned to conduct by WBAI’s board of directors (a.k.a. LSB). The findings of this investigation were delivered to the board in an 80-page documented report, which you can read HERE.
Given that WBAI’s general manager knew that the accusations against Gary were false, why wouldn’t he step forward to rebut them? The reason, said the manager, was his fear that if he contradicted the national board members who had falsely accused Gary, it might jeopardize his pension – even though all he had been asked to do was tell the truth.
For Gary, that was the last straw, as well as being the most personally hurtful. If that was the way he was going to be treated after more than 48 years, during which had raised over $50 million for WBAI and Pacifica, he knew it was time to say goodbye.
But though Gary is no longer on WBAI, you can still hear his program every day
His show will continue to be broadcast live on the Progressive Radio Network (PRN), Monday through Friday, at the same 12noon-1pm time slot. To hear him live, simply go online to www.PRN.live.
Or you can listen live by phone at 1-641-793-7091.
If you miss a show, you can always download it or listen to it at your convenience online HERE, where all Gary’s past shows are archived.
Or if you have something you want to say or ask Gary, you can call in during the show at 1-888-874-4888
Many listeners ask:
Did Gary leave WBAI because it censored some of his programs as “too controversial” to broadcast?
No, that never happened. Regardless of any ethical differences Gary may have with WBAI management, they have always been honorable in their defense of free speech and open discussion of any issue, no matter how controversial. Sadly, that is not the case at other Pacifica stations, such as KPFK in Los Angeles, and (most shamefully) KPFA in San Francisco/Berkeley, which refused to air Gary’s programs, or even allow him to be interviewed on someone else’s program, because they did not agree with some of the information he or his guests presented about AIDS, or the Covid-19 vaccines, or 9/11, or the assassination of JFK, or other topics of critical interest to listeners.
Is WBAI in financial trouble?
WBAI has always struggled financially because, unlike mainstream media, it accepts no advertising or corporate money. It depends on the support of its listeners, whose membership fees and fund drive donations provide virtually all of its income. Unfortunately, a significant part of its income (as much as 70–90% during the past several years) had been raised by Gary Null and his audience, many of whom might probably stop listening to WBAI or supporting it. That is ironic, because on his goodbye program Gary intended to ask his audience not to stop listening and not to stop supporting the station.
Few listeners know that during his 48 years at WBAI, Gary raised over $50 million for the station, and that he also donated large sums of money to it out of his own pocket.
For example, he would sometimes get a frantic call in the middle of the night from the station manager, telling him that because the station was thousands of dollars in arrears on its bills, ConEd was about to shut off its electricity or AT&T was about to turn off its phone services, which would prevent it from going on the air and might cause it to lose its broadcasting license. So Gary would rush down to the offices of ConEd or AT&T at 9:00 AM to write his own personal check for $30,000 or more to keep WBAI on the air. None of that money was ever repaid.
Some of Gary’s supporters praise Gary for how much money he has raised for the station. But Gary’s real contribution to WBAI has been – not just money – but the excellence of his programs. For nearly half a century they have embodied the fullest expression of Pacifica’s mission.
His programs on diet, nutrition, disease and the environment have empowered millions of listeners in their quest for better health and richer lives. He has challenged the corruption of medicine by Big Pharma and exposed the destruction of the earth by corporate exploiters. He has focused public attention on critical social and political issues in a manner more confrontational and enlightening than any other show on Pacifica, including Democracy Now, whose omission, avoidance and distortion of certain controversial issues during the last decade has been disappointing, if not shameful.
What is the Gary Null Paradox?
The paradox is that although WBAI’s listeners love him, WBAI’s management does not. They do not like the fact that he holds them to high ethical standards that they are unwilling or unable to meet. So over the years they have tried to undermine him in a multitude of ways, until he finally had enough, and left.
That is too bad, for without Gary Null, there would be no WBAI today, and may be no WBAI tomorrow.
When Gary joined the station 48 year ago, in 1976, it was on the verge of collapse; it had no money, was perpetually insolvent, and most of its listeners had drifted away at the end of the Vietnam War, dwindling down to a paltry few – even though the NY radio database comprised over 19 million listeners.
So WBAI had no audience and was virtually unknown. On the other hand, Gary had an audience of millions on nationally syndicated radio programs throughout the country as well as on his home base in New York City at WMCA. And far from being unknown, he was nationally famous, as the author of multiple New York Times best-selling books on health, and as a frequent guest on radio and TV talk shows from Mike Douglas to Merv Griffen to Johnny Carson.
It is fair to say that when Gary Null came to WBAI, he had one of the most recognized radio voices in America, and he deployed that voice locally and nationally to help make WBAI financially self-sustaining and socially impactful.
How did he do that? He did it by talking about WBAI to listeners on the more than 250 radio stations he reached on the nationwide ABC radio network, and on his late-night TV appearances with Johnny Carson and others, which were viewed by tens of millions. In less than a year Gary succeeded in adding many thousands of new listeners to WBAI, who brought not only their ears but also their financial support as members. He enabled WBAI to raise over $1 million in a single 15-day fundraising campaign, for which Gary himself raised a significant portion.
When Gary came to WBAI, he was one of the highest paid broadcasters in America. He had a six-figure salary and a syndicated radio show airing on hundreds of stations that attracted millions of listeners. He could have gone to any of America’s major networks and named his own salary.
But he chose WBAI because it was independent and uncensored, even though it meant taking a huge cut in salary, since WBAI’s standard producer’s salary was – not six figures — but only $38,000. Nevertheless, Gary felt it was worth it to be able to say on WBAI what he couldn’t say on the national networks.
As it turned out, however, Gary didn’t even receive the $38,000 salary that the station had promised him. That’s because, since WBAI was always short of money, Gary agreed to defer collecting his salary “for a short time,” until all the other staff members could be paid. But that “short time” turned out to be forever, because WBAI management kept neglecting to pay Gary’s salary with one excuse after another, and to this day never paid him a single penny of the salary he was entitled to.
Calculated over 48 years, that uncollected salary amounts to nearly $2 million from WBAI and another $1.4 million from WPFW and KPFK. So did WBAI and Pacifica cheat Gary out of $3.5 million in salary? Maybe “cheat” is too strong a word, but the station and the network certainly took advantage of Gary’s generosity and gambled that he would never sue them for the money – money that he would have used to empower his health outreach and to produce more of his award-winning documentaries on health and the environment.
The four groups of “Gary haters”
Although Gary’s listeners comprised more than half of WBAI’s entire audience, there were always a few (a noisy few) who objected to his presence on the station’s airwaves.
One group didn’t want WBAI to broadcast any programs about health and the environment at all. They felt that WBAI should devote itself exclusively to “elevated” political debates in which self-righteous ideologues insulted each other on the air without one side ever really hearing what the other side was saying. So they were happy to see Gary leave.
Another group, equally small (and equally noisy), did not want Gary to air social and political issues. They felt it was “inappropriate” and even “presumptuous” for him to address such topics. Which is ironic, given that Gary Null’s credentials and experience as both a political activist and an investigative journalist far exceed those of the noisy critics who want to “keep him in his place.”
The third group of Gary-haters at WBAI and Pacifica comprise a small cabal of ineffective, untalented, and unsuccessful producers who have always resented Gary. They seem to be motivated primarily by envy at Gary’s success as a broadcaster, journalist and prizewinning documentary filmmaker – compared to their own lackluster careers and their negligible impact on the great issues of our era. None of these yelping broadcasters have ever been able to attract a significant audience on WBAI, nor have their audiences been willing to donate money to help keep WBAI alive.
The fourth group has wanted to get rid of Gary for a long time; they are located at Pacifica’s California stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco/Berkeley. Why did they want to get rid of Gary? Because they want to sell WBAI and use the proceeds to refurbish their own faltering stations. They felt they could convince the national board to sell WBAI by claiming that it was a financial liability to the network. And how better to make such a claim come true than to deprive WBAI of Gary’s extraordinary ability to attract supporters and raise money. This would financially cripple WBAI and force the national board to sell it.
Part of their strategy to get rid of Gary was to discredit him. They tried to do this by falsely claiming that he makes a profit when his products are used as premiums during the fund drives. But this is untrue, as is clear from the 80-page report that I mentioned earlier, and which you can read HERE.
As the report demonstrates, Gary does not “sell” his products to WBAI; nor does he “sell” them to WBAI listeners. WBAI either buys those products directly from the manufacturer at wholesale cost — at no profit to Gary — or takes them from Gary’s own inventory and then reimburses him for the cost that he had to pay the manufacturer himself, in order to stock those products for placement in health food stores and other venues – again at no profit to Gary.
The hypocrisy of the claims against Gary is huge when one considers how many people do make a profit when their products are used as “thank-you” premiums for WBAI fund drives.
For example, authors whose books are used as premiums by WBAI earn royalties of $2-$4 on every book WBAI uses, since WBAI must buy those books from the publishers, who also make a profit. But when Gary’s books are used as premiums, he does not get any royalties, because he tells his publisher to apply his royalties to WBAI’s purchase price, which allows WBAI to get his books at below even wholesale bookstore prices.
Which means that Gary Null is the only one who does not make any money from WBAI’s use of his products as premiums. As Oscar Wilde said, “No good deed ever goes unpunished.”
This letter was meant to answer the many questions I have received from listeners about Gary Null’s departure from WBAI. I hope I have answered them satisfactorily
