[Kzyxtalk] KZYX's CPB funding

[Marco McClean]

On 4/8/2015 11:43 AM, sako4 at comcast.net wrote:
> Hi Doug,
>
> This was posted in Coate's blog at the KZYX website:
>
>
> But we do not have that kind of money right now nor are we likely to 
> get it very soon.  The fact is, we are in decent fiscal shape right 
> now but looking ahead a mere couple of months, we have got to raise 
> more money locally or we are going to not only be unable to afford 
> these improvements, but we will again face cutbacks. Right now is when 
> the CPB is giving us the $54K less. Our grant payment is due in days.  
> This year it's $33K. Last year it was more than $80K.
>

     Marco here. Then are there more grants but secret ones? Why do you 
suppose everything is so secret with them, full details behind the 
recent farce of an election included? (An apparent turnout worse than 
any banana republic.)

     The simple fact is: without the CPB grant and other taxpayers' 
money bailing them out, KZYX would have collapsed under the weight of 
its operators' greed every year of its existence, including its most 
recent years under John Coate, Mary Aigner, David Steffen, etc.

     That's not great performance by board and management. It's terrible 
performance-- the worst possible. And if, as is now out in the open, 
hundreds of thousands of dollars have been going every year just to 
management in return for their purported tremendous expertise and skill 
and diligence at keeping things running right, you'd think, wouldn't 
you, that at least electrically and physically KZYX should be the 
Cadillac of radio stations, sparkling in the sun, and not firing on only 
six or seven cylinders so much of the time.

     A snarky letter to the editor of the AVA last week said that Sako 
and his gang of whiners should just shut up about KZYX costing a fortune 
for management, compared to other little radio stations, because KZYX 
has a great large footprint and is so much harder and more complicated 
to keep going and the writer "never even /heard/ of KMEC or KNYO." 
(You'll notice he doesn't mention KMUD.)

     Footprint? The difference between a 100-watt transmitter and a 
1000-watt transmitter is: the 100-watt transmitter and all its support 
equipment (including the mixing board, STL link and lights and heat for 
the studio) costs around fifteen cents an hour to run, and the 1000-watt 
transmitter and the same support equipment costs two or three times 
that.  How far a bigger transmitter reaches doesn't make it any harder 
to run the radio station-- it makes it easier. Further, 9/10 of the 
county's population is in Fort Bragg and Ukiah and near them, which the 
little stations reach just fine. So, footprint, feh.

     The main thing the people running KZYX are doing is guarding it 
like junkyard dogs against being used by anyone who might say things 
like this every once in awhile.











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