 WBAI began airing a national network feed known as "Pacifica Across America" - a curated collection of original content produced by Pacifica stations KPFA in Berkeley, California, KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston and WPFW in Washington, D.C., among other sources (the post-shutdown WBAI schedule included commercial progressive talker Thom Hartmann and Native American free-form series "Undercurrents", which is mostly syndicated to public radio).John Vernile, interim executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, said the station's fund raising and audience had declined in recent years, to the point where the rest of the Pacifica network was subsidizing WBAI's operations on top of servicing its unsustainable debt load.Within hours of the shutdown, WBAI's staffers filed a lawsuit in New York state court challenging the shutdown as illegal.