<html><body><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><div>Strong arguments, Marco. <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>Cc: </b>editor@theava.com, discussion@lists.mcn.org<br><b>Sent: </b>Wednesday, March 2, 2016 3:31:02 PM<br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [Kzyxtalk] Jim Heid's and Tim Gregory's dismissive chortles at the idea of paying workers to work.<br><div><br></div>Jim Heid <jim@heidsite.com> wrote:<br><div><br></div> > *Dismissive chortle*... Actually, lets do a little math...<br><div><br></div><br>Okay, let's, Jim. The fiscal year before this one, MCPB (corp. that <br>manages KZYX) pissed away $575,000, much of it mysteriously, hence the <br>reasonable request for detailed information, and $170,000 of that came <br>from a grant of federal tax money. I guess those are usual figures, <br>though not long ago MCPB had a fiscal year where it pissed away <br>/three-quarters-of-a-million-dollars/.<br><div><br></div><br>When I listed all the real expenses of running and maintaining KZYX, <br>including everything --and I mean everything: paperwork and rent and <br>paint and music publishers' fees and tower rental and equipment <br>maintenance, as well as water and electricity and phone lines-- it was <br>easily covered, and then some!, by just the yearly CPB grant. A truly <br>bare-bones operation like KNYO has essentially everything KZYX has, <br>except the right to use a high-power transmitter, and KNYO spent just <br>$12,000 over the same period. Compare. And KZYX broke down about the <br>same number of times as KNYO, and in many of the same ways.<br><div><br></div><br>A big part of the difference ($575,000 vs $12,000) is: the handful of <br>office people at KZYX are paid a quarter of a million dollars a year to <br>show up and sit in the office. That's many times what it would take to <br>pay all the airpeople to do their shows. Bob Young of KNYO performs all <br>the essential tasks of /everyone/ in the KZYX office, and he does it <br>while helping with his partner's serious health adventure, and he has <br>time left over to have a life, and he is paid nothing. So, Jim, your <br>attitude of awe and respect for the work/value ratio of the pack of KZYX <br>office drones is puzzling. Surely Lorraine Dechter alone can easily <br>cover it all in return for her salary. Why would you think she can't?<br><div><br></div><br>Also, when you characterize $700 or even $1,000 a year per airperson as <br>piffle, you can't be thinking of people I know. People who work for a <br>living don't think of $20 dollars here and $30 there for this job or <br>that in terms of how little each gig adds up to at the end of the year <br>and then spit on it. We think of it in terms of: when I leave paying <br>work to do a two-hour show (that I prepared for days to do) I have $20 <br>to pay for gas to get to the radio station and food to eat when I get <br>home and save up for a new microphone or computer part to make the show <br>better.<br><div><br></div><br>And Tim Gregory blathers that /MCPB is a corporation and so it needs to <br>make a lot of money or else lose market share to video games/. What can <br>be said to that? The educational band of the FM spectrum was set aside <br>to do things commercial radio and its money-centric attitude makes <br>impossible, because if it hadn't been set aside, there would be nothing <br>but KUNKs and Fox Newses up and down the dial. The noncommercial <br>left-hand end of FM isn't there to play Monopoly with; it's there for <br>ordinary local people to further art and science and music and education <br>and public affairs and even whimsy and annoying self-conscious nonsense.<br><div><br></div><br>Radio is cheap. Little churches own whole broadcasting networks of radio <br>stations. Once a station has a broadcast license, and the transmission <br>equipment has been paid for --which was all accomplished for KZYX <br>twenty-six years ago-- it costs pennies an hour to operate. If KZYX has <br>so much money to throw away, and apparently it does, why not pay the <br>local people who do the work? Why constantly lie that that's impossible, <br>when so many shows from out of the area are paid for without your <br>batting an eye?<br><div><br></div><br>Again, if you don't want or need the money for your work, fine. See that <br>someone who does actually gets it, for a change.<br><div><br></div><br>Further, Jim, you write: "/So who do you propose handles the logistics <br>of adjusting pay depending on whether a programmer was able to do his or <br>her usual shifts? Or does the station install a time clock? What fun <br>THAT would be. Or does the station institute some kind of bureacratic <br>process of figuring out how much content a programmer produced, then <br>paying him or her accordingly? Who's going to tackle that adventure? One <br>of the employees you?re proposing to do away with? Do weekends and <br>holidays warrant overtime? And what about taxes: are each of those 90 <br>programmers going to want to complicate their tax returns by including <br>1099 income? Do each of those 90 programmers even FILE a return now? <br>What about worker's comp and the other legal liabilities that the <br>station would incur if it were to hire 90 part-time employees? ...Chortle."/<br><div><br></div><br>Jim, you're being deliberately obtuse. There's a schedule on the <br>station's web page that says when each airperson is sitting at the <br>microphone. It's plain as day; it's already in a spreadsheet; I'm <br>looking at it right now. It's simpler than the pay schedule of even the <br>smallest theater company, and at Mendocino Theater Company, one of the <br>places where I work, a single bookkeeper manages the task in a short <br>afternoon per month using a ten-year-old computer. Workers and <br>performers and designers and techies are paid what's called a stipend. <br>The company has insurance. And theater people do their taxes just like <br>everyone else does. The company is a nonprofit, just like KZYX; unlike <br>KZYX it doesn't get $160,000 a year from taxpayers, but it manages <br>nonetheless. I think your bookkeeper can handle it.<br><div><br></div><br>Speaking of which: Mendocino Theater Company's first play of the 2016 <br>season, /Quills/, about the Marquis de Sade in the booby hatch, opens <br>this week. For info call the box office: 707-937-4477, or go to <br>http://MendocinoTheatre.org<br><div><br></div><br>--<br><div><br></div>Marco McClean<br>memo@mcn.org<br>http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com<br><div><br></div>_______________________________________________<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>