KPFT Houston, the little radio station that could has stood as a cultural icon of Houston for nearly half a century against a changing media landscape and dwindling listener-subscribers. 

Today the 47-year-old station faces a new crisis in a long string of which have plagued the Pacifica network for decades and threatens to take them off the air, this time for good.

On the 14th of July, former interim General Manager Dr. Obidike Kamau was terminated by Pacifica Foundation’s Interim Executive Director Bill Crosier after only 90 days on the job, which set the KPFT community ablaze.

Crosier cites severe, even existentially threatening financial difficulties as the cause for relieving Dr. Kamau from his position which he held for less than three months.Those in support of Dr. Kamau’s reinstatement however claim racism is the primary motivation for his removal.

The Pacifica Foundation owns KPFT and, as of this recording, carries as much as $7 million in debt.

What we have in store for you is a series of interviews myself and Annika O’Brien conducted over the past few weeks with a few people who captured our interest with regard to the crisis at KPFT.

We did not intend for this to be a comprehensive set of interviews, but did want to talk to a number of people with something of an inside view of the station, historical perspectives, as well as those at the middle of this crisis and to give them the opportunity to say their piece.

We’ll almost certainly follow up as time passes and this story develops, but for now we begin with Doyle Odom, former afternoon engineer, with whom I worked on KPFT News, and who is the current host of KPFT’s Radioactive, which airs Monday nights from ten-P-M to midnight.

We turn to him for one inside perspective on the Crisis at KPFT.