<html><body><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><div>Outstanding.<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>"Marco McClean" <memo@mcn.org><br><b>To: </b>"kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Tuesday, November 17, 2015 10:41:16 PM<br><b>Subject: </b>[Kzyxtalk] News about KZYX.<br><div><br></div> News about KZYX<br>--by Marco McClean<br><div><br></div> Here's a video that explains why it's important to talk about how <br>much money everyone is paid, no matter where you work:<br>http://tinyurl.com/TellYourPay<br><div><br></div> I was just thinking about how MCPB pays just Mary Aigner twice the <br>money that it pays for all the NPR shows and all the local shows put <br>together. And for what? The NPR and other syndicated shows play <br>themselves (and often repeat over and over, week after week), and the <br>local airpeople certainly play themselves. What exactly is Mary doing <br>for the station that makes her worth half the entire yearly pot of <br>membership dues, where all the local airpeople who are actually doing <br>what the station is there for in the first place, producing and airing <br>their shows --under Mary's thumb, yet-- get paid nothing at all, zero <br>percent of even the minimum legal hourly rate, for their skill and <br>talent and dedication and preparation, and on top of being paid zero per <br>hour, they don't even get zero per hour for the legal-minimum four hour day.<br><div><br></div> And MCPB is advertising for a new general manager who will be paid <br>$5,000 A MONTH to do a short afternoon's paperwork per week. That's <br>about /five hundred dollars per hour/. What I get from the advertisement <br>is that the main responsibility of the general manager they're looking <br>for is to somehow meditate enough money into being for the station to <br>coast along in its current state of expensive, oppressive mediocrity. <br>(Background in nonprofit fundraising, check. Importance placed on <br>knowledge of and accomplishments and innovations in media in general and <br>creative educational radio in particular, not so much.)<br><div><br></div> Radio is cheaper and easier to do than any other business besides a <br>church. Once the license is acquired and the big-ticket equipment is <br>paid for --and for KZYX this was covered a quarter-century ago-- it <br>costs little more to operate and maintain radio as to heat and light the <br>space you do it in. And, just as with a church or charity, paying a few <br>people at the very top very well to fake the need for a mysteriously <br>huge cash flow is wrong. KZYX somehow blew through $575,000 last year <br>alone, about a third of that being tax derived in the form of the CPB <br>grant. That makes it three times as wrong. Think of the Corporation for <br>Public Broadcasting grant as an annual bailout without which KZYX would <br>have sunk below the waves every year of its existence; it is /managed <br>that badly/ compared to other little radio stations. And it's managed <br>that badly by people who brag on their websites and Facebook pages and <br>resumes that they've done a great job by edging the books slightly into <br>the black, where other little stations without the benefit of any <br>$190,000-a-year bailout at all have been all along.<br><div><br></div> With proper management paid by the hour for hours actually worked, <br>the airpeople can be paid. They should be paid. The MCPB directors who <br>perpetuate the situation where the airpeople are not paid are bad both <br>in the sense of being bad people and being incompetent, and they should <br>feel bad. Let's talk about that on the air, on KZYX. Let's get the KZYX <br>so-called news department involved, because that's news.<br><div><br></div> Here's something like what I have in mind. It's a news article <br>about a similar situation.<br>http://tinyurl.com/ThisIsLikeThat<br><div><br></div> Of course something just like that should be done regarding Fort <br>Bragg City Hall, and Ukiah, and the County Schools racket, and so on, <br>and to some extent the Anderson Valley Advertiser admirably takes on <br>that sort of thing. It's news when any supposedly public organization is <br>spending so much more money on top people's salaries and perks and <br>mystery expenses than on what the organization pretends it's there to <br>do. Here's a model piece of work for the KZYX news department to look <br>at-- an article about charities that behave the way KZYX management does:<br>http://tinyurl.com/Just25OfThem<br><div><br></div>p.s. I just read email from John Sakowicz to another boardmember, that <br>he copied to me to read because he mentioned me. Just this part of it <br>struck me as being exactly true, exactly as written, and I think it's <br>important for dues-paying station members (part owners) and the general <br>public (paying with our taxes whether we like it or not) to know:<br><div><br></div> "The truth of the matter is that Mary Aigner is the shot caller <br>around here. She keeps the station in Philo, where she lives, and has <br>defeated the move to Ukiah. She determines programming. She censors the <br>content of shows by imposing policies like "no safe harbor". She purges <br>her critics who have shows, me among them. She thwarts our 2,100 members <br>from communicating with one another and organizing. She disparages, <br>insults, and marginalizes those members who are reform-minded. She <br>influences Board elections. She operates in secret. She is <br>passive-aggressive. She is snarky. And when Aigner is called out by the <br>likes of me, Marco McClean, Norman De Vall, Dennis O'Brien, Mary Massey, <br>Christina Aanestad, KC Meadows, Els Cooperrider, Doug McKenty, and many <br>others, she puts on this act-- "Poor me. Help. I'm just a working woman. <br>I'm just a single mother who never got child support. Help. Save me from <br>these bad people." --and the Board dutifully comes to her rescue."<br><div><br></div>---<br>Marco McClean<br>memo@mcn.org<br>http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com<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>