[Kzyxtalk] Think it through before giving money to KZYX.

[Tim Gregory]

some have issues with kzyx as a business, some with job performance of its
employees, some with its calendar of programs, some with its spending priorities,
some with perceived injustices needing remedy, and some with personal insults
received who now only seek revenge.

i respect anyone's decision to disavow or not contribute to a membership of 501.c3
supporters, and certainly as members i respect your rights to lobby and manuever for
change through the elected board governance model.

i further respect/expect lamentations to continue, since those with the most to lose
are last to see the wisdom of change.

sadly, marco's 'suggestions' are more anti-pitching: wishing current board/staff to
fail in current efforts to raise what they're asking for...

sorry, i'm just not THAT disaffected. you cannot wish or moralize yourselves a
better radio organization. fund it, and better see to future spending...imho.
---

Marco here. Hear me out. This will take five minutes.

Not-for-profit Mendocino County Public Broadcasting has a bookkeeper, so General
Manager and self-styled Chief Executive Officer John Coate doesn't have to do the
books. It has a program director, so John doesn't have to direct programs. It has an
operations manager to manage
operations, and an engineer who can be called to come and engineer, and a "business
support coordinator" to, I guess, coordinate business. And still John Coate is being
paid a salary of, I piece together from
various stories, $60,000 a year, the equivalent of 1,200 (twelve
hundred!) yearly $50 memberships, to do what, exactly? Really, what? And just last
year he dealt himself a ten percent raise. And when I
suggested that he take a cut in pay instead, and pay off the station's debt and
replace all the unreliable equipment using thus-freed-up money, he declined to
comment upon that, and at the board meeting of two weeks ago the very idea of even
diminishing his salary was declared ridiculous and laughed at. Meanwhile none of the
people doing the actual work of radio at KZYX are getting paid anything at all, nor
is anyone in
management likely to offer to pay them. Which I hope doesn't seem right to you,
because it's not right.

So when you're chirped at on the air by pledge-drive chuckleheads that KZYX needs
your money to keep the bills paid and keep the shows you love on the air, the shows
your friends do, you're being lied to. In fact if the pledge drive leads to $60,000,
all those pledges, if actually
honored, funnel into the bank account of someone who could literally vanish for
weeks or months at a time and nobody but his fellow
bureaucrats would notice. In similar news, if an entire year's
commercial underwriting of the station brings in $40,000, that just about covers the
salary of the man soliciting commercial underwriting for the station; it does
nothing to pay the station's bills or help your friends in any way to stay on the
air. $40,000 is 800 (eight hundred) yearly $50 memberships.

KZYX gets an annual grant of taxpayers' money* which by itself is enough to maintain
and operate the station in fair weather and foul. All the frenetic hustle and bustle
of a pledge drive and its week or two of egregiously unlistenable begging, that
preempts and steps on the /shows that you have already paid to hear/*, benefits
no-one but the few people at the top. Your friends who do the real work of radio,
who prepare all week every week to do their shows and then do them, who are trying
to do what KZYX is supposed to be there for in the first place, get nothing. They
don't even get gas money to drive to the studio. Sure, they're happy to volunteer
--I'm happy to volunteer at KNYO and KMEC-- but why isn't KZYX' manager class happy
to volunteer in return? The few tasks required of a radio station manager can be
accomplished in two to four hours per month. If you must employ and pay a manager,
why not pay him by the hour for that monthly short afternoon and pay the airpeople
at the same rate for at least their on-air time? It can be done on a
stipend system, like at any other small nonprofit organization, like at any theater
company. And the decision to move forward in this way and climb out of a medieval
feudal system and into an egalitarian
progressive era can be made by the board members at their next meeting. I'm told
they will never, that there's no chance, but if you give up then of course they will
never.

This pledge week send a message to those board members by waiting. Just don't
pledge. If you're feeling particularly brave, call the pledge line and briefly and
politely but firmly tell why you're not pledging just yet, and ask the phone
volunteer to pass the message along, and say goodbye and hang up.

Here, look at MCPB's financial report:

http://kzyx.org/Board/audits/MCPB%20FY%202014%20Audit.pdf

(Page 3 of 13 is for fiscal year 2014). Skip past Memberships And
Contributions ($314,730), Grant Income ($192,022)* and underwriting ($58,100) (which
includes both commercial and private underwriting) and see the section just showing
money actually paid out to keep on the air the shows you love and also the shows you
love not so much:

 >For Programming and Production: $63,737 (most of this went to NPR and
other shows produced elsewhere).
 >For Broadcasting: $133,313 (fees, studio overhead, electricity,
equipment, transmission equipment and repairs, everything). (Notice: that leaves
$60,000 of just the grant income untouched, and, also
untouched, donations, memberships and underwriting.)
 >Total: $191,927.

Now look at the section showing the amount MCPB paid out to just a few top people to
be a collective hood ornament and look busy when there's anyone around to see, like
for example during pledge week. This is where the rest of the grant income went, and
all of the donations, memberships and underwriting:

 >For Management: $181,924
 >For Program Promotion: $76,708
 >For Fundraising and Membership Development: $50,256
 >For Underwriting Solicitation and Grant Solicitation: $44,046
 >Total: $352,934

Even if you figure it by management's own numbers, the station's budget is three
times what it needs to be, all to pay entrenched bureaucrats, little people with a
little power, resulting in interesting and quirky locally produced shows like mine
never being given a chance, because management feels entitled to its power and money
stream, like a big mean dog crouched down with its arms around all the food bowls
pushed
together, snarling as it eats and darting its eyes about the place. Another result
is accomplished, genuine, soft-spoken, well-educated, articulate airpeople like
former Mendocino County Supervisor Norman de Vall and even former and future MCPB
boardmember Doug McKenty being kicked out of their air gigs merely for not
sufficiently stifling
others' criticism of a few top people at the station. And Late Night Liz waiting
seven years and still not being allowed to do the children's show that she can do so
well. And so on.

It's up to the MCPB boardmembers to make progress with any combination of any of a
dozen single strokes any time they're motivated to do so.

You can provide that motivation to improve KZYX by simply putting off pledging until
you have some positive indication that change is likely to occur. For me, that would
be their cutting off all management
salaries and then negotiating from that point. You decide what is change and what
isn't, and then donate or don't; it's your money.

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

p.s. If you want to put a little money where it'll do tangible good right now, you
can give any amount to tiny 107.7fm KNYO-LP in Fort Bragg (knyo.org) or 105.1fm KMEC
in Ukiah (kmecradio.org), both of which, unlike KZYX, are entirely supported by and
entirely responsive to the communities they serve, and are continually progressing
and improving by being dedicated mainly to giving airtime to locals to do radio. I
know for a fact that there are time slots open at KNYO. If you have ever wanted to
do any kind of a radio show --written-word or interview or documentary or drama or
variety or news or even just playing music-- email bobb at poetworld.net (that's Bob
Young) and say so, and there you are on the radio in Fort Bragg. And then if KZYX
ever gets properly liberated and you want a countywide platform you can move your
polished project over there, or use both, from wherever you are. Every second or
third week I do my KNYO show from my wife's house a hundred miles away, using the
web and equipment assembled for less than $200. There's never been a better time to
do live creative radio. The very small amount of money that's really needed just
needs to go to the right places and not the wrong people, that's all.

---------------

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