<html><body>Bravo! . . . Thank you. --beth bosk <br /><br /><blockquote><br />----- Original Message -----<br /><div style="width:500px;background:rgb(228,228,228);"><div style="font-weight:bold;">From:</div> "Marco McClean" <memo@mcn.org></div><br /><div style="font-weight:bold;">To:</div><kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org><br /><div style="font-weight:bold;">Cc:</div><discussion@lists.mcn.org><br /><div style="font-weight:bold;">Sent:</div>Sun, 28 Jun 2015 23:34:34 -0700<br /><div style="font-weight:bold;">Subject:</div>[Kzyxtalk] My comment for the public comment period of the Monday, June 29 MCPB board meeting in Willits.<br /><br /><br />
(Here's what I just sent to the boardmembers of MCPB.)<br /><br />
Please print this email out and bring it to the Monday, June 29 MCPB <br />
board meeting in Willits.<br /><br />
My public comment:<br /><br />
"I can't make it to the meeting this time. So when you get to the public <br />
comment period I want a board member to read my public comment aloud <br />
into the record. Any board member or former board member will do. It <br />
takes three minutes.<br /><br />
"MCPB spent $575,000 over the last twelve months. KNYO spent $12,000 in <br />
the same time. KMEC spent $19,000. The difference between operating KNYO <br />
at 87 watts and operating KZYX&Z at a total of about 5,000 watts is <br />
about fifteen dollars a day in electricity. KZYX is spending twenty <br />
times what it needs to, even figuring in the NPR show dues. And KNYO and <br />
KMEC have some valuable features that KZYX lacks, like, for example, <br />
downtown performance-space studios on the street in Fort Bragg and Ukiah <br />
and an easily configurable remote studio system that doesn't require <br />
anyone to babysit the main studio; remote broadcasts are controlled by <br />
the remote broadcaster with one click to go on the air and one click <br />
when his or her show is over. Any airperson can have a durable, <br />
portable, high-quality remote studio for two or three hundred dollars <br />
and be up and running in ten minutes. Those are only a couple of <br />
examples; there are more. So when angry people defend the status quo and <br />
KZYX's hemorrhaging of half a million dollars every year on the grounds <br />
that KZYX really needs to blow through that kind of money to keep the <br />
shows on the air, that's just not true; they have it all wrong. You're <br />
doing everything in the most complicated, byzantine, oppressive way <br />
possible, just as you've been doing for the past twenty-five years, and <br />
the only reason KZYX didn't fail financially every year of its existence <br />
--including this year-- is you've been bailed out by the annual CPB <br />
grant. By anybody's measure, and in any business, that's appallingly bad <br />
corporate management. That's banana-republic-government-quality management.<br /><br />
"I know you have a hard time seeing that, for the same reason people <br />
swear by expensive alternative placebo medical products and procedures. <br />
You've already invested so much faith and money --in the case of KZYX, <br />
other people's money-- and you just naturally have to defend it so you <br />
don't feel like a fool. And anyone pointing out what's wrong with that <br />
becomes a threat to your authority, because if everyone can see what's <br />
wrong, then you not only feel like a fool, you look like one, too. It's <br />
just human nature to get huffy and blame everybody else for the <br />
consequences of your own actions. I understand.<br /><br />
"So John Coate's going, now. If you must have an imperial manager and <br />
pay him $60,000 a year to hang around the station and do the lazy <br />
afternoon per month of crucial tasks that keep the station legal, that <br />
person might as well be doing a real radio station manager's work, which <br />
at KZYX would include the positions of David Steffen and Mary Aigner, <br />
and so you can let them go. That single suggestion, if you follow it, <br />
saves you $800,000 over the next ten years, and I have other suggestions <br />
that will save you even more money. I recommend you use that fountain of <br />
money to pay the airpeople, the ones listeners turn on their radios to <br />
hear in the first place.<br /><br />
(signed) Marco McClean<br /><a href="mailto:memo@mcn.org">memo@mcn.org</a> <br /><a href="http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com">http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com</a><br /><br /><br />
_______________________________________________<br />
Kzyxtalk mailing list<br /><a href="mailto:Kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org">Kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org</a> <br /><a href="http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/listinfo/kzyxtalk">http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/listinfo/kzyxtalk</a><br /></blockquote></body></html>