Membership drop
The sources for this statement are 1) the election supervisor's report from the November 2004 Local Station Board election, which reports that 20,800 listener-member ballots were delivered, and 2) recent statement by the current local election supervisor that this election 15,518 ballots will be mailed out.
Simply put, WBAI cannot survive without members. Each listener-member contributes an average of around $130 to the station. That means a loss of 5000 net members means a financial hit of $650,000. This is difficult for WBAI to bear, given that our total budget is around $3.7 million.