[Kzyxtalk] Fairy circles and astrological contraception.

[Marco McClean]

 > Tim Gregory wrote under Subject: Re: [Kzyxtalk] KNYO: The way real 
radio works
 >
 > small is beautifuller, but not always beautiful. if you put a 40-hp 
vw motor in a
 > jetta, you won't get out of the driveway...marco, you still don't 
allow for
 > fundamental questions of scale, in terms of content as well as actual 
mechanics...


     Marco here, Tim.

     All of KZYX's radio transmission and infrastructure and studios and 
NPR dues and other expenses don't make a $50,000 per year difference 
over KNYO's similar expenses, let alone a /$565,000 per year/ 
difference. It isn't any more complicated and doesn't require any more 
office people or effort for airpeople to talk and play music into a 
slightly louder transmitter. Having a few more airpeople on the schedule 
doesn't require any more overseeing personnel. The same common driving 
skills that no-one has trouble learning and the same traffic light work 
at an intersection whether there are twenty cars using it in a day or 
eighty or a thousand.

     Another way your car analogy does not apply here: You still don't 
understand how cheap radio is. There's plenty of money to pay the 
airpeople a decent theatrical stipend. And there will never be enough 
money for it to make sense to pay Mary Aigner and David Steffen to do 
whatever they imagine they're doing in the office. As I said earlier to 
the board: good riddance to John Coate, that angry, insecure, expensive 
fraud; hire another manager if you can't help yourself, but get one who 
will do a manager's job, which includes dispensing with the pretend 
busywork. Look, if Mary and David cost $50,000 a year each, just those 
two are sucking out of the radio station the equivalent of 2,000 yearly 
$50 memberships. That's all the memberships you have. All the money 
raised in all of your frantic happyface membership drives is constantly 
being diverted to just Mary and David, who are not useful or good for 
the station. David Steffen's fundraising efforts barely return the money 
to pay him. Mary Aigner's job description is a /secret kept from 
everyone, including the board of directors of the station/. Any sane 
manager would cut them loose.

     If Mary wants to come around once a week and play Grateful Dead CDs 
to the empty sky, she can still do that, and she should be paid for 
that. Twenty dollars for a two-hour show sounds about right. And, Tim, 
if you want to keep doing what you're doing, you can still do that, and 
you wouldn't have to worry about Mary kicking you off the air for 
talking about this on your show, or for playing a song with a swear in 
it at 1am or just, you know, not having your mind right, in the Cool 
Hand Luke sense, which, who does?

     I listened to about 45 minutes of your show the other night while I 
drove down 128 and then out of range. A man called and said you were 
overmodulating and you should turn your microphone down, and then you 
played records at seeming random, and played a recording of a time when 
someone called you and repeated stonedly over and over about how people 
don't have a decent old fashioned ethical standard anymore, and then I 
was too far away and I had to switch to KQED. That's what it sounded 
like the last three or four times I listened in; it's not my cup of tea, 
but you show up on time to work and you work, and you should be paid.

     I tuned to KZYX on an afternoon last week and there were two or 
three studio women all fangirl giggly in a phone interview with a 
Druidical mage woman who'd self-published a book about spiritual 
herbology. I got out at the story of the ancient Egyptian technique of 
melting herbs and honey and natron to cure plantar fasciitis, which I 
know to be a painful disorder of the foot that you get from working on a 
ladder in zoris. The ancient Egyptians knew a lot about that. I'm sure 
they were on ladders in zoris a lot, with their sphinx scaffolding and 
whatnot. Those women should be paid what they're worth. And there's no 
need for Mary Aigner to wander in that day, or any day, and collect $150 
for herself for playing Windows solitaire in the next room while they 
interview New England magesses about fairy circles and astrological 
contraception and eating clay for the complexion.

     The people who do all the syndicated shows KZYX pays for are being 
paid. Local airpeople should be paid for their work too. If they don't 
need or want the money they can buy a microphone for the station, or a 
roasted chicken and a pack of organic cigarets for a homeless person.


 > the historically direct symbiosis we have with npr is the most 
obvious omission from
 > your straw dog/knyo comparisons.


     Having NPR and other syndicated shows doesn't increase the 
administrative load. After syndicated shows are paid for --and that was 
$27,000 last year at KZYX, and I did not omit it-- which involves a 
mouse click, and after they're inserted into the schedule, which 
involves another two or three mouse clicks per show at the beginning of 
the season, they require no attention. The clock ticks and the computer 
switches them in. No-one has to stand there and watch the computer blink.

     If that system ever fails, it's the station engineer's job to fix 
or replace it. It's no more expensive nor complicated than the computer 
you use to sleeptalk the messages you post, Tim. And if it fails often, 
call a better engineer to figure it out and fix it right. That's part of 
what a manager does. How many radio station personnel does it take to 
telephone the techie?


 >  legal exposure is another.


     Legal exposure? How does KZYX management's flushing $10,000 down 
the toilet every week protect you from a determined legal saboteur? If 
you're so afraid of legal trouble that you'll agree to knuckle under to 
any oppression, you might get out and take a walk around outside the 
miasma of authoritarian craziness and paranoia of KZYX, and clear your 
head, and /then/ think about it, and see if it doesn't all start to look 
different.

     All the legal expenses and bad feelings and unpleasant kerfuffles 
ever at KZYX resulted from management's own paranoia and bad policies 
and actions. They don't have to be that way. There is another way and 
I've been showing it to you all my life.

Marco McClean
memo at mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com

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