Hank Kee, Joe King, and a whole team of experts have been talking computers and answering computer questions on the air just about forever. Every Wednesday night at 8:00 PM listeners rushed to WBAI radio in New York City and on the web to learn the latest about computers and to have their questions answered on “The Personal Computer Show” aka “The Personal Computer Radio Show.”
UPDATE 2: January 3, 2019: Again the program was cancelled by WBAI, but it will continue on PRN. Listen to the announcement here at the beginning of the final WBAI show.
UPDATE 1: Thanks to overwhelming support, the program will remain on WBAI at its new time one hour later, as announced on the program August 31.
Recently, the station has been plagued with many problems including its phone service, and the program continued without the long question-and-answer periods.
One week ago, it was announced on the program that the show will be canceled by the station manager Berthold Reimers — who sent an email to the staff to give them the news. The program would be demoted to a “podcast.”
The program will end officially after its Wednesday, August 31, 2016, broadcast in its regular time slot. According to the official website of the program:
After a long run of 33 years, we have been notified by WBAI management that August 31, 2016 is our last live broadcast show.
Berthold Reimers the general manager of WBAI is following through to changeover 70% of the current programming, He has arbitrarily elected to drop some 30% of the shows currently being broadcast and suggested another 40% may be dropped in the new future.
He discussed this with no one at the station and affected producers of those shows were notified via a perfunctory email message. He stated he was not available for any discussion on the changes.
The team of computer experts who run the show are not sure whether to continue. Comments and suggestions have been requested at a new Twitter account set up for the purpose.
On last week’s show, Joe King said repeatedly, “WBAI does not have a professional program director.”
Hank Kee read an editorial comment.
We have been notified by WBAI Monday evening that August the 31st will be our last live broadcast show … The stars of The Personal Computer Show have been the listeners. We have learned from each other.
The success of the show has been really the live questions on technical issues, but BAI management discontinued providing phone service… We have been relegated to a non-existent WBAI podcast which at present has yet to be defined…
Lately, WBAI has been plagued with low quality sound and volume issues that have made nearly every program literally ‘unlistenable.’ Sometimes the host is ten times louder than the caller, sometimes the exact opposite, and always — always — the music is far too loud.
The station WBAI has fallen off the air repeatedly this past week, including multiple times today. Before management worries about revamping the line-up by canceling quality shows, they ought to consider working on staying live, and then on getting the sound volumes right. Then, get the phone service up.