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Regarding the latest debacle at KZYX. --by Marco McClean<br>
<br>
<br>
It's a great word: debacle. I like all three ways people
pronounce it.<br>
<br>
<br>
Quite by chance I came across a visual metaphor for the modus
operandi of KZYX since its inception. This, like that, is a
syncopated comic masterpiece of failure and then jump-cut return to
ready-to-fail-again state. It comes with commentary by James
Vincent, and here's a link to it: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://tinyurl.com/AMetaphorForKZYX">http://tinyurl.com/AMetaphorForKZYX</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Study that, then read this: Recently Lorraine Dechter, having
been sabotaged materially and organizationally from the get-go,
wrote that her abrupt resignation as manager after six months
(recall Raoul van Hall's having lasted only six weeks, so props to
Lorraine) was a "mutual decision". Mutual between what parties?
Because if the decision was mutual between her and the board, then
the board met unethically. Again. And it's not merely unethical;
conducting station business as a board without public notice or
participation is against the law and threatens MCPB's corporate
personhood.<br>
<br>
<br>
And there's nothing on the KZYX website about this situation,
and of course no discussion on the air. I'm sure you remember my
having pointed out numerous times how peeved-Nixon/Secret-Squirrel
the inner politburo of MCPB is and has always been.<br>
<br>
<br>
All problems of KZYX could be solved by putting a prominent link
on KZYX.org to an unmoderated forum open to airpeople and members
and the public, who pay for KZYX in taxes whether we like it or not.
$4,000,000+ just in tax derived money has disappeared into MCPB,
plus another ten or eleven million dollars in membership and
anonymous big-ticket donor money: a recipe for corruption. And
that's while the MCPB board and their close sycophants laugh at the
idea of paying a pittance to the airpeople, without whom they'd be
just another automated NPR station, and they'd /still/ be paying the
handful of shlubs in the office a quarter of a million dollars a
year to sit there and watch the computer blink, and answer the phone
to say that whoever you're calling for is not available, and let the
needlessly overcomplicated infrastructure go to hell, so the
airpeople have to declare on a regular basis, on the air, that
something's wrong, and ask any listeners who might know who to call
to fix it (!) to please do so.<br>
<br>
<br>
KZYX breaks down more often than KNYO does, and KNYO has several
remote studios, and everything else KZYX must maintain, and also has
a performance space, but does it all on a budget of less than
$12,000 a year.<br>
<br>
<br>
Last year I applied to manage KZYX, from a position of a deep
understanding of publishing and broadcasting in general and local
radio in particular, both commercial and nonprofit. The Stuart
Campbell-appointed manager-search committee chairman threw my
application away without even considering it, and when a John
Sakowicz, then on the board, read in the newspaper that I'd applied,
and he wondered why he had to read it in the newspaper to find out,
that same chairman lied to him that I had never applied. The board
hired Lorraine. So why would they undermine her, and sabotage her,
and /resign/ her? Because it's their nature. Again, see James
Vincent's commentary on a comic GIF: <a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://tinyurl.com/AMetaphorForKZYX">http://tinyurl.com/AMetaphorForKZYX</a><br>
<br>
<br>
Just to get us all on the same page: in the real world running a
radio station is dead easy. A transmitter is as reliable as a
refrigerator and uses a comparable amount of electricity. A little
home or office refrigerator (or a low power radio transmitter) uses
a few hundred watts, and a big high power one uses a few thousand
watts. Electricity costs about 15 cents per thousand watts, per
hour. There is no way, short of abject crookery or mental
retardation or a rat's nest of bureaucratic financial OCD for a
radio station with a 4,000 watt transmitter and a fifty watt STL and
two thirty watt translators to cost $600,000 a year to run. That is
many times too much; it's /fifty times/ what KNYO costs. If the
vermin at the heart of KZYX can be sieved out and exposed to the
light, the airpeople can all be paid and the tech problems can be
solved, and my show can be on KZYX at last, and there'll still be a
fortune left over.<br>
<br>
<br>
I'm copying this to the board(*), to make sure that comes up as
an agenda item for the boardmembers to discuss out loud with each
other and the attendees at the coming meeting. Bring the financial
books.<br>
<br>
<br>
(*) Rather, I'm copying it to the /comment box/ buried in the
website, as the individual board members still refuse to make their
contact information available. This is another ongoing problem that
should be addressed at the meeting, as there's no way to know that
Stuart Campbell doesn't still have access to that box, to intercept
and interfere with material meant for the other boardmembers, which
he did routinely when he hijacked the office years ago, and why
would he give up the keys, given his history? In fact, it would
possible for a single person with such web and email keys to be the
source of a great deal of at least the latest few years of
never-ending dysfunction at KZYX. I wouldn't be surprised at all if
that person turned out to be Stuart Campbell, though from what I've
seen at board meetings Meg Courtney matches him for sour spite. Tch,
the whole bunch of them have the sense of humor of a box of hammers.
I'm not ready to lay down any bets, I guess.<br>
<br>
<br>
--
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Marco McClean
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:memo@mcn.org">memo@mcn.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com">http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com</a></pre>
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