<html><body><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><br><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>"John Sakowicz" <sako4@comcast.net><br><b>To: </b>"kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Thursday, March 23, 2017 11:58:48 AM<br><b>Subject: </b>Re: [Kzyxtalk] Apropos of this Tim Gregory brouhaha: a blast from the past.<br><div><br></div><div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; color: #000000"><div>This is so well-written, Marco, and the argument is so well-reasoned. <br></div><div><br></div><div>I said it during the candidates forum on-air on March 15, and I'll say it again: If by some miracle I were to get my show back at KZYX, I'd gladly give that slot on the schedule to you. You do up to five hours of radio in a single show, and you hold my interest for that entire time. Your shows are, by turns, informative and entertaining. Some are darkly funny. More than a few are classics. </div><div><br></div><div>Continue to build your digital platform for your show, Marco. KZYX is an anachronism. Live broadcasts isn't where it's at. On-demand online media is where it's at. On-demand mobile media. is where it's at. Podcasts, Marco. Podcasts. And webstreams. Start a Youtube channel, too. Fold in some video with the audio. <blockquote style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', NotoColorEmoji, 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'Android Emoji', EmojiSymbols; background-color: #ffffff;"><div id="divtagdefaultwrapper" dir="ltr" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div class="episode_title" style="margin: 30px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-family: georgia, serif; text-align: center; clear: right; line-height: 2em;"><h2 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-size: 1.8em; font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: -0.005em;"><br></h2></div></div></blockquote></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>, "discussion lists" <discussion@lists.mcn.org><br><b>Sent: </b>Thursday, March 23, 2017 12:35:28 AM<br><b>Subject: </b>[Kzyxtalk] Apropos of this Tim Gregory brouhaha: a blast from the past.<br><div><br></div><br>(from the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Feb. 1, 2016:)<br><div><br></div>Subject: Tim Gregory, ladies and gentlemen.<br><div><br></div>Tim Gregory wrote: “Self-destructive souls are the hardest to <br>understand...they go down to the crossroads again and again, and wonder <br>why they keep getting run over. Without any real base on the board, or <br>within the organization for that matter, js [John Sakowicz] will mewl <br>outside the door forever, as does Marco...civility? No, thanks...team <br>play? As long as they can be captain... We are bigger and better than <br>this. The board did well to isolate the bull in the China shop so <br>far--perhaps now we need help from Humane Society?”<br><div><br></div>Marco here. Tim, you remind me: I hardly ever listen to KZYX anymore; so <br>much of it is so dumb, and when I'm not working at my various day and <br>night jobs I'm watching a film or helping at the theater company or <br>reading and writing and working on my own show (KNYO and KMEC); even so, <br>whenever I flip through the dial lately and stop on KZYX I hear <br>show-ejection-level pottymouth swearing. On Women's Voices, for example, <br>the week after Xmas: a recorded airheaded Gaia-worshiping <br>feminine-mysteries-of-the-universe speech with incidental ejaculations <br>of shit. And on your show, Tim, a few /fucks/, for good measure. And <br>Saturday night Jan. 23rd, on somebody's actually pretty good show: the <br>Fish Cheer (F-U-C-K! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!) (300,000 people yelling <br>FUUUUCK!), and immediately after that a Richard Thomson sound-alike <br>calling, in song, his official enemies motherfuckers. And my attitude <br>about all that is a philosophical, /So what? Where's the harm?/ Because <br>the FCC has never, I repeat never, pulled the license of any FM radio <br>station for a few swears here and there, commercial or noncommercial, <br>small market or large market, even outside of the Safe Harbor hours, so <br>it's a trick that your self-important masters use to remove from their <br>presence anyone who will not kowtow properly to their authority and <br>please them. The bosses are not following the law because it's right or <br>because it's the law -- really there are a lot of ways in which they <br>don't follow the letter or spirit of the law; they're just using a <br>scarecrow of the law to enforce their own arbitrary rule in what they <br>think of as their clubhouse. And you know it.<br><div><br></div>This was my experience in 1989 at KZYX. Sean Donovan didn't like Mitch <br>Clogg, because Mitch wouldn't kowtow properly to him. He kicked Mitch <br>off the Environment Show. I brought Mitch onto my show to talk about it. <br>Next week Sean phoned on the night of my show and told me I was off the <br>air and out of the station for good, don't bother driving there. Much <br>later I was told: the official reason I'd been banned was that weeks <br>before the Mitch offense I'd said the word bullshit at 2am, and Sean had <br>saved that up against a time of greater need. That's how they do it. <br>That's how Sean's appointment Mary Aigner got rid of Facilitator 1, the <br>best deejay KZYX ever had. Mary just didn't like her, so she kicked her <br>out and said it was for playing a sweary song in the middle of the <br>night. This maneuver is what's called in the musical world a repeating <br>motif.<br><div><br></div>But, Tim, you know you'll never be kicked off your show or out of the <br>station, because you're a true sycophant. The proof: your show is <br>consistently objectively lousy. You put zero preparation and zero effort <br>into it, and even your two listener/callers will agree to that. You show <br>up with nothing, no educational content, nothing of an intellectually <br>stimulating or even poetic nature, you play some CD sides and mumble the <br>telephone number, and you ID the station. That's your show, over and <br>over, for decades. Every time I tune to your show and let it run for <br>awhile, there's little to keep a listener there, least of which your <br>stoned-sounding breathy mumbling. Rick has an excuse -- he has a <br>disability -- but he's clever and he prepares from a base of knowing a <br>great deal about the music his engineer helps him play. Shining through <br>his speech impediment: he's a musician and a scholar and a talented <br>radioman. You're not. John Sakowicz is abrasive and mercurial and <br>sometimes shocking, but his show is doing the work of radio and yours <br>isn't. And Mary kicked him out because she goaded him into swearing <br>quietly to himself in the background, not even on a mic, while she was <br>at the mixing board sabotaging his interview show. And all these years <br>she's been paid for that kind of sabotage, by the way, almost half the <br>station's entire yearly membership money, a fact never brought up during <br>the interminable unlistenable poor-sad-twinkly-us pledge drives. And, <br>while all the office people who don't know jack squat about how to do <br>radio were and are being paid like little barons and princesses, on a <br>Mendocino scale, the airpeople are not paid at all, because the bosses <br>have been lying all along that there is no money to pay people like Rick <br>and Jamie and Verge and so on. And Verge bailed.<br><div><br></div>Tim, when you stir yourself to try a little harder and do much better <br>radio than I've ever heard you do, and you speak up about injustice in <br>terms that are a little less mushmouthed and are even slightly focused, <br>and /then/ they kick you off the air and out of the station and they <br>claim it's because you played a song with a swear word in it, we'll all <br>be interested to see how righteously and civilly you defend your abusers <br>against all the others who spoke up and were kicked out and locked out.<br><div><br></div>Speaking of which... Norman, when you go to the station tomorrow to <br>inspect the records, bring your phone so you can photograph paper <br>documents, in case they refuse to let you use the copier or <br>sheet-scanner. And bring a thumb drive, so you can take big files away <br>with you to examine later. I'm interested in finding out who holds the <br>lease on the studio building, and to know the details of the lease. And <br>I'd like a breakdown on how much the different office positions have <br>been paid year by year -- so-called manager and superfluous program <br>director and beyond-superfluous business underwriting coordinator and so <br>on, because the pretend reports are not detailed enough. I mean, I'd <br>really like a clearer idea of where that half a million dollars comes <br>from and goes every year.<br><div><br></div>We're all members as well as taxpayers, and so part owners of KZYX, and <br>we have a right to know all these things and more.<br><div><br></div>Remember, KMFB was an operation easily as big and busy as KZYX and ran <br>quite well on about a fourth of that much, and had no government grant <br>and no noncommercial charity organizational benefits, and everyone at <br>KMFB was paid, including all the airpeople and, at least in its last <br>twenty years, no-one was fired for playing a song with a swear in it, <br>and the phone was always live and available, and there was no <br>seven-second delay nor panic button, and everyone was comfortable <br>talking about station business on the air if the matter came up in <br>conversation.<br><div><br></div>PS. I finally got to see the stop-motion animated film /The Boxtrolls/. <br>I think it illustrates the situation at KZYX eerily well. And stay <br>through the end credits; there's a wonderful dialogue between the two <br>street sweepers, where the filmmakers leave the animator in the frame <br>while the puppets talk about free will and destiny and all that.<br><div><br></div>Marco McClean memo@mcn.org<br><div><br></div>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><br>_______________________________________________<br>Kzyxtalk mailing list<br>Kzyxtalk@lists.mcn.org<br>http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/listinfo/kzyxtalk<br></div><br></div></body></html>