[Kzyxtalk] MCPB Board Election Results

[sako4 at comcast.net]

Congratulations, Benj Thomas. 

I'm sorry Denny O'Brien and Doug McKenty. You ran good, clean campaigns. 

I also very sorry sorry for the members of KZYX and the people of Mendocino County. Regardless of the policy differences between you and your opponents, each of you, Denny and Doug, clearly had more experience in public radio than your opponents -- Denny, you as a programmer and former Board member at KMEC, and you, Doug, as a programmer and former Board member at KZYX. 

What lesson did we learn in this last election? 

We learned that the "home field advantage" of KZYX management and its rubber stamp Board cannot be overcome by extremely well-qualified candidates such as Denny and Doug. KZYX management and its Board get out the vote. They control the format of the candidates debate.They formulate the questions. They chose its moderator. KZYX management and its Board also orchestrate hate letter campaigns in local newspapers. And they control the KZYX website and Facebook page. In other words, KZYX management and its Board are organized, as much as they are ruthless and self-serving. 

What else have we learned? Let me county the ways. 

KZYX will remain insular -- a closed clubhouse for Executive Director and General Manager, John Coate, and Program Director, Mary Aigner, and their friends. 

KZYX will remain a jobs program for the people who work there, like Coate and Aigner, regardless of their job performance, which, recently, has included lots of dead air, irritating scratchy signals, and fuzz outs. If the broadcast can't be heard, what's the point of a radio station? 

KZYX will remain autocratic. During the summer of 2013, Coate gave himself a 10 per cent raise at precisely the same time Mendocino County workers were either losing their jobs to attrition or being forced to take a 10 per cent pay cut. So much for worker solidarity, John Coate! Your raise was shameful. 

KZYX will remain in Philo, where nobody lives except Aigner, and where the broadcast signal must travel long distances, up and down over long distances and over mountain ranges-- instead of being located in Ukiah, the county seat, where lots of people live. 

KZYX will remain private and secret. Salaries will not be disclosed. Monies earmarked for a Ukiah studio will go missing. Good programmers who question Coate and Aigner will be purged. Also, and very importantly, the station's 2,100 members will not be allowed to organize or communicate with one another. 

KZYX will allow all programming decisions to be made solely by Aigner. The Community Advisory Board and the Program Advisory Committee will remain weak and ineffective. The public be damned. 

KZYX will continue to fail with aging, Korean War-era broadcast equipment. This equipment is held together by bailing wire and masking tape. Technology, like archiving shows, podcasts, Voice over Internet (VoIP), will remain a distant dream. Investments will not be made in equipment nor technology, even as staff give themselves raises. 

KZYX will also continue not to post all job openings, especially the part-time news positions, in defiance of the spirit of affirmative action and equal opportunity laws. And on the subject of news, KZYX will probably never have a full-time news department again. The listeners get only ten minutes of local news. We should be getting an hour. 

And so my friends, what hope do we have for change? 

Starve the beast! 

Yes, I say, starve the beast. Members and underwriters should continue to boycott KZYX. 

The writing is already on the wall. KZYX is financially failing. Membership has already fallen from 2,300 members to 2,100 members, and the 2015 Winter Pledge Drive missed its goal by a third. KZYX has started to financially fail ever since Coate and Aigner have purged anyone at the station with an opinion or a question, and have hand picked their Board of Directors, and thus now exert also tyrannical control over the station. 

Underwriting revenues have also fallen off. 

Need to hear more? 

The FCC has yet to renew one of the station's licenses, even as Coate and Aigner spend big bucks in legal fees defending poor management practices. 

And the Corporation for Public Broadcasting continues to slash its federal bailouts of KZYX. 

Bottom line: Starve the beast! Coate and Aigner don't deserve your support. Much needed change will never come to KZYX until members and underwriters force change. And that starts with Coate and Aigner being shown the door. 

-- John 

*************** 

The ballots have all been tabulated and here are the final results of the MCPB Board of Directors Election: 



District 2: 

Tony Novelli - 156 (24%) 

Benj Thomas – 493 (76%) 





District 5: 

Dennis O'Brien – 210 (31.4%) 

Clay Eubank - 458 (68.6%) 





At-Large: 

Doug McKenty - 253 (37%) 

Ed Keller - 428 (63%) 



695 total ballots were cast (33% of membership) 

-- 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.mcn.org/pipermail/kzyxtalk/attachments/20150401/bfcd907e/attachment.html