[Kzyxtalk] Fw: [MCN-Announce]- [MCN-Discussion]- Fwd: The KZYX's board letter to Members

Tue Feb 18 19:36:30 PST 2014

On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 7:35 PM, Paul Lambert <paul.lambert55 at yahoo.com> wrote:

No one put me up to posting the Board's letter. So many people were talking about it so I went to the website, read it, copied it and posted it - because I thought people would be interested.

There is no conspiracy except in your own minds.

Let's get on with the work of mmaking KZYX better and that has little to do with the Board or even less with the management but with the listeners and the programmers.

Let's stopping playing the old blame game, get down to real issues and get on with it.

This isn't the 1990's or KPFA; you ;lost that battle then, so why re-fight it when all you can do is hurt the very institution you claim to support.

Paul Lambert

On Tuesday, February 18, 2014 1:42 PM, "nsi at mcn.org" <nsi at mcn.org> wrote:

Who is Elaine Herring? And why has she passed the task of making the
Board's letter public, on to a former employee of the station? 
To shield her personal contact information I would guess. 

Ms. Herring (not of the Anderson Valley Herrings) resided in Ukiah
two years before
 she managed a seat on the Board of Directors of
KZYX/Z.  And now she is the Chair. 
A Chair who shudders at the prospect of in-person, public, and
video-streamed Board meetings.  Who has reduced the frequency of
those public meetings to even less than what the Board itself
recently agreed to. 

Herring has no Institutional memory regarding the station. She is
comparing John Coate's performance with Belinda Rawlins, the ditz who
went through the bank draw and then vanished.  And the same Board who
sat clueless while Rawlins went through a $200,000 draw, hired Coate. 

Does anyone have contact information for Elaine Herring to share.
She's not listed in the phone book. The Board does not list their
email addresses
 on the station website. 
Elaine does not answer email directed to her through the station
website. 
I'd like to know, for instance, how Elaine Herring is connected to
RemCo, a plant along Highway 101 on the fringe of Ukiah, which
manufactures parts for nuclear weaponry. And whether that connection
(if it exists) has any bearing. 

So the Board Members statement below, devoid of any opportunity for
Public Input, decided upon behind the curtain of the board
listserv--where they are not supposed to meet as a full group to come
to decisions regarding the station: those are tasks and deliberations
to be performed in Open Board meetings, or NOTICED Closed Sessions
(when assessments of personnel are the subject of evaluation or
scrutiny) . 
I am really interested in how these board members came to what they
profess to "know." And how they have juggled the figures independent
of Coate. 

And Paul Lambert. He too with the tiny Institutional memory; he too
with a smidgen of experience of residency in Mendocino County: who
was paid the full $20,000 of the allotted News Department budget to
do a daily 5 minute reading of submitted PR pieces, plus excerpts
from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and (occasionally) Ukiah Daily
Journal, often without attribution. The most criticized venture ZXYX
has ever engaged in. And was rewarded with the slot previously held
by Open Lines. 

For those of you with Institutional memory: Remember the struggle at
Pacifica. The
 struggle against the machinations of the Pacifica Board
background:rgb(228,228,228);">From: "Mitch Clogg" 
To:"Mendocino Listserv" , 
Cc:"scott peterson" , "Bruce Anderson" 
Sent:Tue, 18 Feb 2014 12:29:55 -0800
Subject:[MCN-Discussion]- Fwd: [Kzyxtalk] The KZYX's board letter to
Members

This is an extraordinary letter. Squint at it. I've never seen one
like it.

Consider the Board of Directors, at the bottom. These are the
directors 
of a controversial and floundering radio station. The skimpy I.D.'s
of 
each raise more questions than they answer (like, what interest does
a 
health-club manager in Santa Rosa have in a Mendocino public-radio 
station?). Lots of
 others. How enlightened and "progressive", on 
average, are realtors?

I reject nonsense about "balance" at KZYX, meaning the business and 
conservative communities deserve equal air time--or any promised 
time-allotment, anymore than Islam should be entitled to build a
minaret 
in the Vatican. The Mendocino radio audience can be considered in
the 
light of our voter registration. Democrats, Greens, Independents and

Peace-and-Freedom voters represent a much higher share here than 
elsewhere, so the question of what's "middle ground" in this
demographic 
will yield an answer that is unique to this place. It's as
Left-leaning 
here as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The radio station has always
 been

more conventional and Establishment-friendly than its listeners. (It
was 
founded by a wine salesman.)

In other words, the socio-political "neutral" place here is not the
same 
(duh!) as it is in Dallas, Texas, Charleston, South Carolina or
Riyadh, 
Saudi Arabia. This is obvious, but it is inevitably overlooked
(except 
by those who benefit from ignoring the Environmental-Progressive
people 
in favor of the chamber-of-commerce people, in the station's
decisions).

Station management will counter this by pointing out all the 
folk-friendly shows on air. None has had keen-enough teeth to add
any 
note to the coastal breeze,
 and the station's management, far from 
fostering the "OUR THING" jubilation that has characterized, say,
KMUD 
(to name just one of numerous good stations), keeps the shades drawn
as 
much as the law allows.

Consider, too, that wherever there is a money stream, as there is 
whenever KZYX has a pledge drive, there is always somebody with a
straw 
stuck in that stream. It is folly to assume that things are on the
up & 
up there.

Mitch Clogg
Mendocino

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Kzyxtalk] The KZYX's board letter to Members
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 11:16:28 -0800 (PST)
From: Paul Lambert 
Reply-To: Paul Lambert , kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org [1] 
To: kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org [2] , 
kzyxtalk-request at lists.mcn.org [3] 

The State of the Station February 2014
We are eight of the nine Directors on the Board of Mendocino County 
Public Broadcasting. We are pleased to report on the remarkable
STATE 
OF THE STATION.

Â· We know that KZYX&Z is financially secure.

Â· We know that the station is ready and able to provide the 
community with critical, lifesaving information and news when needed
in 
an emergency.

Â· We know that we offer programs that listeners enjoy and 
depend on hearing in their daily lives.

Â· We know that the station has a devoted, stable membership.

Â· We know that the station is making necessary technical 
improvements to its infrastructure and equipment to improve our
signals 
and minimize/eliminate downtime.

And we know that we owe much of this progress, this success, to the 
efforts and accomplishments of our General Manager John Coate and
his 
staff.

Business/Finances:

We give our General Manager
 full credit for turning around the 
stationâ??s finances. When John Coate was hired in 2008, KZYX was
more 
than $200K in debt. At this time (Feb. 17, 2014) we have more money
in 
the bank than we owe. We could pay every bill we have, past and 
present, and still have funds in the bank Our $75K line of credit
has 
not been touched since November, and has been untouched for 8 out of
the 
past 12 months.

For the past 3 years our audits, prepared by an independent 
professional, have included a cover letter declaring that there are
no 
irregularities or problems with our bookkeeping and accounting
practices.

John retired $116K in old debts last fiscal year. He
 restructured
our 
remaining debt into a single no-interest monthly payment, which we
have 
made without fail for almost two years.

John reorganized our membership department to ensure more timely and

consistent mailings, such as pledge acknowledgement letters.

John shares all financial information with the Board in a way that
is 
prompt and upfront. During his tenure as GM he has become an expert
in 
managing a highly unpredictable cash flow and implementing cost
control 
measures.

Operations/Infrastructure:

We installed a new backup power generator at the Philo studio. In
the 
past, the
 entire station would go off the air every winter,
sometimes 
for days at a time, due to power failure. This no longer happens.

Now we have

a new Emergency Alert System
a new main control console in Philo
a new state-of-the-art antenna for KZYX 90.7
a new and improved program automation system
a digital storage unit to begin building a comprehensive digital
music 
library.
backup equipment for various parts of the signal path resulting in
far 
less downtime when something breaks
We have changed the way the satellite studios connect to Philo,
saving 
hundreds of dollars each month in phone charges.

We rebuilt every part of
 the equipment required for the 88.1 signal
on 
Bald Hill above Fort Bragg. Now it is trouble-free.

We replaced the unit that converts audio to a radio signal to a
higher 
quality unit that greatly improves the fidelity of the broadcast.

We completely rebuilt the kzyx.org website in 2012, relying
primarily on 
the efforts of staff and volunteers

There have been numerous improvements to office and studio
components 
such as computers, microphones, CD players, etc. and the Philo
studio 
building has been rewired for better reliability.

Programming:

We have a dedicated volunteer staff of about 100 programmers who
provide 
a quality product, week in and week out. We have 31 local
programmers 
and 17 local programs on the air today that were not on the air in 
August 2008 when John began. These include Mendo Matters, Give and 
Take, Consider This, The Sonic Blender, Portrait in Jazz as well as
many 
others. We are constantly looking to update our programming to keep
it 
fresh, and we continue to welcome new programmers and new program
ideas 
that will help us to better serve our community. We expanded our
local 
news coverage with the addition of Michael Kisslinger and veteran 
reporter and producer Sheri Quinn.

We, the undersigned trustees on the MCPB Board of Directors, are
very 
grateful to John Coate and to his A-Team staff for their excellent 
contributions to our station. We are diverse, independent-minded 
individuals who believe wholeheartedly that they are doing a fine
job of 
day-to-day management, and that they are moving the station forward
in 
the right strategic direction.

February 17, 2014

Eliane Herring, Board President, Attorney (admitted to practice in
Wash. 
D.C. and Tex., not Cal.)

Holly Madrigal, Board Vice-President, Mayor of Willits

Meg Courtney, Board Secretary, Vice-Mayor of Ft. Bragg

Stuart Campbell, Programmer-Elected Representative, College
Professor

Fran Koliner, Retired Teacher, Visual Artist

Bob Page, Managing Partner, Airport Health Club, Santa Rosa

Laviva Dakers, Mother and KZYX programmer

Ed Keller, Realtor and Property Development Consultant

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