Pacifica Foundation

Huxley At Work

Huxley expanded his own LSD-mescaline project in California by recruiting several individuals who had been initially drawn into the cult circles he helped establish during his earlier stay. The two most prominent individuals were Alan Watts and the late Dr. Gregory Bateson (the former husband of Dame Margaret Mead). Watts became a self-styled "guru" of a nationwide Zen Buddhist cult built around his well-publicized books. Bateson, an anthropologist with the OSS, became the director of a hallucinogenic drug experimental clinic at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Hospital. Under Bateson's auspices, the initiating "cadre" of the LSD cult -- the hippies -- were programmed.13

Watts at the same time founded the Pacifica Foundation, which sponsored two radio station WKBW in San Francisco and WBM-FM in New York City. The Pacifica stations were among the first to push the "Liverpool Sound" -- the British-imported hard rock twanging of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and the Animals. They would later pioneer "acid rock" and eventually the self-avowed psychotic "punk rock."

Pacifica History:

From KPFK, Los Angeles

<a id="overview" name="overview"> </a>Overview

Pacifica was born in the late 1940's out of the (now nearly forgotten) peace movement surrounding World War Two. Lewis Hill, a conscientious objector and Washington, D.C. newsman, was fired from his mainstream reporting job when he refused to misrepresent the facts.

This was a time when the idea of a listener-sponsored radio station was a new one which had never been implemented. Many people doubted the viability of a broadcast model which didn't rely on some kind of corporate or government funding. But the idea was too compelling for Hill and others who agreed with him. Pacifica was born and in 1949 KPFA went on the air from Berkeley, California.

KPFK, in Los Angeles, was the second of what would eventually become five Pacifica Stations to go on the air. It was 1959 and Terry Drinkwater was the first General Manager. Blessed with an enormous transmitter in a prime location, KPFK is the most powerful of the Pacifica stations and indeed is the most powerful public radio station in the Western United States.

1946 Lewis Hill moves from Washington DC to the San Francisco Bay Area and begins work toward creating an alternative radio station.

1949 Pacifica first goes on the air April 15 as KPFA-FM in Berkeley CA.

1950 Opponents to the Korean war are among the many minority viewpoints given freedom of speech on Pacifica during the McCarthy era.

1951 Pacifica receives the first major foundation grant (Ford Founda- tion) for the support of a non-commercial broadcast operation.

1952 Jazz aficionado Phil Elwood debuts on KPFA, making him today the longest-running jazz programmer in the country.

1953 Philosopher/author Alan Watts begins a regular program on KPFA that continues until his death in 1973.

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