<html><body><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><div aria-label="Compose body">Marco,</div><div aria-label="Compose body"><br></div><div aria-label="Compose body">Your idea is brilliant -- take the pot of money at KZYX spent on staff salaries (approximately $250,000) and divide it equally among staff, programmers, fundraisers, etc., according to hours worked. I'm on the KZYX Board, and I will submit your idea as an agenda item for discussion at the next meeting in Fort Bragg. </div><div aria-label="Compose body"><br></div><div aria-label="Compose body">No doubt I'll be shot down, but I'll make the request for the record. Both the FCC and CPB are now paying close attention to the following:</div><div aria-label="Compose body"><ul><li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">KZYX management's oppressive business practices -- total control of programming decisions by management; also Korean War-era, failing equipment; also the purging of any programmer that dares to question management, also the battery of two women on station premises and the </span>refusal<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> by management to investigate; and </span></li><li><span style="font-size: 12pt;">KZYX's secret finances -- staff salaries are not disclosed; also money for the Ukiah studio, about $19,000 total from three sources, is missing; also financial </span>reporting (line items)<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> is </span>inconsistent<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> vis-a-vis the station's audit, the </span>station's<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> tax </span>returns<span style="font-size: 12pt;">, and the general manager's report.</span></li></ul></div><div aria-label="Compose body"><br></div><div aria-label="Compose body">John</div><div aria-label="Compose body"><br></div><div aria-label="Compose body"><br></div><hr id="zwchr"><div style="color:#000;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12pt;" data-mce-style="color: #000; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>From: </b>"Marco McClean" <memo@mcn.org><br><b>To: </b>"kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org><br><b>Cc: </b>discussion@lists.mcn.org<br><b>Sent: </b>Thursday, January 8, 2015 11:39:43 PM<br><b>Subject: </b>[Kzyxtalk] A modest proposal regarding KZYX.<br><div><br></div>Dennis O'Brien wrote:<br> >..There is a general desire to have a face-to-face meeting of some <br>kind in the<br> >near future to discuss issues and candidates for the next MCPB/KZYX board<br> >election. The power of the Programming Council to overrule the Program<br> >Director has already leaped to the top of the discussion... Authority <br>for hiring<br> >and firing will be returned to the Board of Directors...<br><div><br></div> Dennis, Marco here. When you get a little power to effect some <br>change, I recommend that you make it a point to pay airpeople at the <br>same rate per hour actually worked as management (news people and <br>fundraising people too) are paid. That doesn't mean make money appear <br>from nowhere; it means strip KZYX management of its salaries and perks <br>and divide the freed-up $100,000-plus per year among the people actually <br>doing what the radio station is there to do in the first place.<br> The station has a bookkeeper. The bookkeeper has a computer and <br>bookkeeping software. A schedule exists of who's on the air and for how <br>long each per month. Beginning to pay them is is a trivial task that <br>could be implemented overnight. Airpeople would get tax forms, answer a <br>couple of questions about how many dependents to claim, and so on. And <br>if airpeople don't want or need the money, they can say so and donate it <br>to the station. Theater companies I've worked for have a more <br>complicated time of it than KZYX would, and bookkeeping is not a problem <br>for them.<br> I don't know what Mary would do, or the fundraising guy, but when <br>John Coate takes a hike, which he will instantly his personal money <br>spigot slows to a trickle(*), you'll get a better manager, one who has a <br>background in radio and loves radio and /does/ radio. I can think of <br>several just off the top of my head.<br><div><br></div>(*)He'd fight it, though, wouldn't he? Look at how he's dug himself in <br>and erected bulwarks around. He's not just the general manager-- isn't <br>he also CEO now? CEO of Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Corp.? I <br>think you'd have to change out nearly the entire board.<br><div><br></div> My own show is currently running on a station (KNYO-LP) whose <br>manager doesn't take any pay at all. He can do that because managing a <br>radio station is dead easy. There are some routine tasks that must be <br>done once a month, and there are some routine tasks that must be done <br>once or twice a year. Other than that, when something breaks you try to <br>fix it and if you're not qualified you telephone the engineer. And why <br>would any station need a manager /and/ a program director? When an <br>airperson can't make his shift he can call someone else to do it or let <br>automation cover it. If an airperson is consistently absent because he <br>doesn't care, give the airtime to someone else and spend three minutes <br>editing the schedule on the web page and another three minutes emailing <br>the bookkeeper. And done. When someone wants to do a radio show, you <br>show them how to operating the equipment, give them a pep talk and a <br>pamphlet and allocate their time slot. My experience listening to new <br>radio people who are treated this way is that they do their first show <br>and their friends tell them what was wrong with it, and the next show <br>sounds like they've been doing it forever. And when something goes wrong <br>it just isn't a big deal. It isn't the end of the world. It gets solved <br>and they sail ahead.<br> Several of my listeners emailed me and one called me after the last <br>time I talked about all these things being not the way things are done <br>at KZYX and each one said the same thing: "$60,000 isn't very much for a <br>manager. That doesn't sound like too much." But it really is too much. <br>It's infinitely more than the airpeople are being paid. At KNYO I don't <br>mind not being paid, mainly because no-one with power over my project is <br>being paid any more than I am, and the person with power over my project <br>never wields it. I'm free to do my work and my art and never have to <br>worry that a manager will drunk-call me at two in the morning and start <br>barking at me how to do /my/ show, or tell me I can't have certain <br>guests on, or threaten me that if I talk about station business or some <br>sensitive subject or even let a guest talk about it I'll lose my <br>airtime. I don't have to worry about anything like that; I can do the <br>show I came to do. Contrast that with KZYX, which all the way from the <br>beginning has never been right about these things, has always done <br>things the hard, oppressive way. And why is that? I really wonder.<br><div><br></div> Also, just the general manager's salary at KZYX is eight to ten <br>times the entire operating budget of KNYO.<br><div><br></div> KZYX in the noncommercial educational band. It exists by law to do <br>things you can't do on commercial radio. And yet all the many years I <br>was at KMFB, which was commercial radio, in the commercial band, I was <br>way more free to do the best I could by my lights than anyone has ever <br>been on KZYX. Yes, let's see what can be done to liberate things over <br>there, where they've received literally millions of taxpayers' dollars <br>in grants because they promised to make radio freedom possible and then <br>flushed a great deal of that money away in managers' salaries.<br><div><br></div> Oh! Speaking of which, Dennis, if there's broadband service wherever <br>you have your meeting, you can put the meeting on the air live on KZYX <br>with a free program for Linux and Windows (and probably Mac) that I've <br>been using to do my KNYO show by remote when I'm out of town. It's <br>called B.U.T.T. (Broadcast Using This Tool). It installs in five <br>minutes, including typing in streaming settings (you can copy and paste <br>them in), and thereafter it's one click and you're on the air. The <br>engineer can set it up so you don't even need anyone in the studio at <br>the station. I'd think a discussion of issues and candidates would be <br>pretty good radio and fit right in with the mission of KZYX. Tell John <br>Coate and Mary Aigner you want to do it and see what they say.<br><div><br></div> Okay, tired of this now. Pressing send. I have to go back to work.<br><div><br></div>------------<br><div><br></div>http:/MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com<br><div><br></div><br><div><br></div><br><div><br></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>Kzyxtalk mailing list<br>Kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org<br>http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/listinfo/kzyxtalk<br></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>