<html><body><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><div>Stay on point, Tim. </div><div><br></div><div>Address the issues, not your so-called "elements of style".<br></div><div><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;"><b>From: </b>"Tim Gregory" <tgregory@saber.net><br><b>To: </b>"kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org><br><b>Cc: </b>discussion@lists.mcn.org<br><b>Sent: </b>Monday, February 16, 2015 2:40:48 PM<br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [Kzyxtalk] Think it through before giving money to KZYX.<br><div><br></div>john<br><div><br></div>you don't agree? imagine my surprise....<br><div><br></div>anti-pitching is not pro-active. period.<br><div><br></div>you are quick to first make my point about marco, then each of the staff by name,<br>then sean donovan, for good measure...i guess the misdirection and personal attack<br>standards are looser here...<br><div><br></div>weak tactics lose battles. following a pariah might be another one.<br>---<br><div><br></div><br>Tim<br><div><br></div>I think Marco McClean's message is something the MCPB's 2,300 members need to hear,<br>especially during the Pledge Drive. It's not a rant. Most definitely not a rant,<br>Tim. It's a recommendation for necessary change at MCPB. It's a blueprint for<br>necessary change.<br><div><br></div>Marco is a bright, thoughtful man, who loves public radio, who loves Mendocino<br>County and its people, and who has been hosting a popular show on the coast for many<br>years.<br><div><br></div>What MCPB needs is a Chief Engineer. A really capable Chief Engineer, who is young<br>and enthusiastic, and happy to come to work, and up on state-of-the-art radio<br>operations, and by that person, of course, I don't mean Rich Culbertson.<br><div><br></div>We need broadcast equipment that works. We need a broadcast signal that's always up.<br>We need an end to dead air and scratchy signals. We need to replace Korean War-era<br>equipment.<br><div><br></div>We need to move the main studio to Ukiah.<br><div><br></div>We need technology and social media for programmers, i.e. archived shows, podcasts,<br>links to blogs, etc. We need to build digital platforms for programmers.<br><div><br></div>What we don't need is an Executive Director or General Manager or Master Martinet,<br>or whatever the MCPB Board decides to call John Coate.<br><div><br></div>And we probably don't need Aigner or Steffen, either.<br><div><br></div>We need for the people of Mendocino County to have control over programming choices,<br>not just one person (Mary Aigner). We need for the MCPB membership to be involved in<br>operations and programming.<br><div><br></div>We need a changing of the guard. We need fresh faces. We need new ideas. We need<br>radical new ideas.<br><div><br></div>Most of all we need a new business model.<br><div><br></div>The old business model -- the Sean Donovan Business Model -- is broken. It gave<br>lifetime job security for a few people. But it stopped working a long time ago.<br><div><br></div>I think Marco speaks to all of that.<br><div><br></div>And, Tim, make no mistake about it: MCPB is our radio station, too. We're not going<br>to " wish or moralize [ourselves] a better radio organization. and fund it," as you<br>so blithely suggest.<br><div><br></div>Thank you.<br><div><br></div>John<br><div><br></div>----- Original Message -----<br><div><br></div>From: "Tim Gregory" <tgregory@saber.net><br>To: "kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org><br>Cc: discussion@lists.mcn.org<br>Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 10:26:05 AM<br>Subject: [Kzyxtalk] Think it through before giving money to KZYX.<br><div><br></div>some have issues with kzyx as a business, some with job performance of its<br>employees, some with its calendar of programs, some with its spending priorities,<br>some with perceived injustices needing remedy, and some with personal insults<br>received who now only seek revenge.<br><div><br></div>i respect anyone's decision to disavow or not contribute to a membership of 501.c3<br>supporters, and certainly as members i respect your rights to lobby and manuever for<br>change through the elected board governance model.<br><div><br></div>i further respect/expect lamentations to continue, since those with the most to lose<br>are last to see the wisdom of change.<br><div><br></div>sadly, marco's 'suggestions' are more anti-pitching: wishing current board/staff to<br>fail in current efforts to raise what they're asking for...<br><div><br></div>sorry, i'm just not THAT disaffected. you cannot wish or moralize yourselves a<br>better radio organization. fund it, and better see to future spending...imho.<br>---<br><div><br></div>Marco here. Hear me out. This will take five minutes.<br><div><br></div>Not-for-profit Mendocino County Public Broadcasting has a bookkeeper, so General<br>Manager and self-styled Chief Executive Officer John Coate doesn't have to do the<br>books. It has a program director, so John doesn't have to direct programs. It has an<br>operations manager to manage<br>operations, and an engineer who can be called to come and engineer, and a "business<br>support coordinator" to, I guess, coordinate business. And still John Coate is being<br>paid a salary of, I piece together from<br>various stories, $60,000 a year, the equivalent of 1,200 (twelve<br>hundred!) yearly $50 memberships, to do what, exactly? Really, what? And just last<br>year he dealt himself a ten percent raise. And when I<br>suggested that he take a cut in pay instead, and pay off the station's debt and<br>replace all the unreliable equipment using thus-freed-up money, he declined to<br>comment upon that, and at the board meeting of two weeks ago the very idea of even<br>diminishing his salary was declared ridiculous and laughed at. Meanwhile none of the<br>people doing the actual work of radio at KZYX are getting paid anything at all, nor<br>is anyone in<br>management likely to offer to pay them. Which I hope doesn't seem right to you,<br>because it's not right.<br><div><br></div>So when you're chirped at on the air by pledge-drive chuckleheads that KZYX needs<br>your money to keep the bills paid and keep the shows you love on the air, the shows<br>your friends do, you're being lied to. In fact if the pledge drive leads to $60,000,<br>all those pledges, if actually<br>honored, funnel into the bank account of someone who could literally vanish for<br>weeks or months at a time and nobody but his fellow<br>bureaucrats would notice. In similar news, if an entire year's<br>commercial underwriting of the station brings in $40,000, that just about covers the<br>salary of the man soliciting commercial underwriting for the station; it does<br>nothing to pay the station's bills or help your friends in any way to stay on the<br>air. $40,000 is 800 (eight hundred) yearly $50 memberships.<br><div><br></div>KZYX gets an annual grant of taxpayers' money* which by itself is enough to maintain<br>and operate the station in fair weather and foul. All the frenetic hustle and bustle<br>of a pledge drive and its week or two of egregiously unlistenable begging, that<br>preempts and steps on the /shows that you have already paid to hear/*, benefits<br>no-one but the few people at the top. Your friends who do the real work of radio,<br>who prepare all week every week to do their shows and then do them, who are trying<br>to do what KZYX is supposed to be there for in the first place, get nothing. They<br>don't even get gas money to drive to the studio. Sure, they're happy to volunteer<br>--I'm happy to volunteer at KNYO and KMEC-- but why isn't KZYX' manager class happy<br>to volunteer in return? The few tasks required of a radio station manager can be<br>accomplished in two to four hours per month. If you must employ and pay a manager,<br>why not pay him by the hour for that monthly short afternoon and pay the airpeople<br>at the same rate for at least their on-air time? It can be done on a<br>stipend system, like at any other small nonprofit organization, like at any theater<br>company. And the decision to move forward in this way and climb out of a medieval<br>feudal system and into an egalitarian<br>progressive era can be made by the board members at their next meeting. I'm told<br>they will never, that there's no chance, but if you give up then of course they will<br>never.<br><div><br></div>This pledge week send a message to those board members by waiting. Just don't<br>pledge. If you're feeling particularly brave, call the pledge line and briefly and<br>politely but firmly tell why you're not pledging just yet, and ask the phone<br>volunteer to pass the message along, and say goodbye and hang up.<br><div><br></div>Here, look at MCPB's financial report:<br><div><br></div>http://kzyx.org/Board/audits/MCPB%20FY%202014%20Audit.pdf<br><div><br></div>(Page 3 of 13 is for fiscal year 2014). Skip past Memberships And<br>Contributions ($314,730), Grant Income ($192,022)* and underwriting ($58,100) (which<br>includes both commercial and private underwriting) and see the section just showing<br>money actually paid out to keep on the air the shows you love and also the shows you<br>love not so much:<br><div><br></div>>For Programming and Production: $63,737 (most of this went to NPR and<br>other shows produced elsewhere).<br>>For Broadcasting: $133,313 (fees, studio overhead, electricity,<br>equipment, transmission equipment and repairs, everything). (Notice: that leaves<br>$60,000 of just the grant income untouched, and, also<br>untouched, donations, memberships and underwriting.)<br>>Total: $191,927.<br><div><br></div>Now look at the section showing the amount MCPB paid out to just a few top people to<br>be a collective hood ornament and look busy when there's anyone around to see, like<br>for example during pledge week. This is where the rest of the grant income went, and<br>all of the donations, memberships and underwriting:<br><div><br></div>>For Management: $181,924<br>>For Program Promotion: $76,708<br>>For Fundraising and Membership Development: $50,256<br>>For Underwriting Solicitation and Grant Solicitation: $44,046<br>>Total: $352,934<br><div><br></div>Even if you figure it by management's own numbers, the station's budget is three<br>times what it needs to be, all to pay entrenched bureaucrats, little people with a<br>little power, resulting in interesting and quirky locally produced shows like mine<br>never being given a chance, because management feels entitled to its power and money<br>stream, like a big mean dog crouched down with its arms around all the food bowls<br>pushed<br>together, snarling as it eats and darting its eyes about the place. Another result<br>is accomplished, genuine, soft-spoken, well-educated, articulate airpeople like<br>former Mendocino County Supervisor Norman de Vall and even former and future MCPB<br>boardmember Doug McKenty being kicked out of their air gigs merely for not<br>sufficiently stifling<br>others' criticism of a few top people at the station. And Late Night Liz waiting<br>seven years and still not being allowed to do the children's show that she can do so<br>well. And so on.<br><div><br></div>It's up to the MCPB boardmembers to make progress with any combination of any of a<br>dozen single strokes any time they're motivated to do so.<br><div><br></div>You can provide that motivation to improve KZYX by simply putting off pledging until<br>you have some positive indication that change is likely to occur. For me, that would<br>be their cutting off all management<br>salaries and then negotiating from that point. You decide what is change and what<br>isn't, and then donate or don't; it's your money.<br><div><br></div>Marco McClean<br>memo@mcn.org<br>http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com<br><div><br></div>p.s. If you want to put a little money where it'll do tangible good right now, you<br>can give any amount to tiny 107.7fm KNYO-LP in Fort Bragg (knyo.org) or 105.1fm KMEC<br>in Ukiah (kmecradio.org), both of which, unlike KZYX, are entirely supported by and<br>entirely responsive to the communities they serve, and are continually progressing<br>and improving by being dedicated mainly to giving airtime to locals to do radio. I<br>know for a fact that there are time slots open at KNYO. If you have ever wanted to<br>do any kind of a radio show --written-word or interview or documentary or drama or<br>variety or news or even just playing music-- email bobb@poetworld.net (that's Bob<br>Young) and say so, and there you are on the radio in Fort Bragg. And then if KZYX<br>ever gets properly liberated and you want a countywide platform you can move your<br>polished project over there, or use both, from wherever you are. Every second or<br>third week I do my KNYO show from my wife's house a hundred miles away, using the<br>web and equipment assembled for less than $200. There's never been a better time to<br>do live creative radio. The very small amount of money that's really needed just<br>needs to go to the right places and not the wrong people, that's all.<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>