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

[sako4 at comcast.net]

Tim 

I think Marco McClean's message is something the MCPB's 2,300 members need to hear, especially during the Pledge Drive. It's not a rant. Most definitely not a rant, Tim. It's a recommendation for necessary change at MCPB. It's a blueprint for necessary change. 

Marco is a bright, thoughtful man, who loves public radio, who loves Mendocino County and its people, and who has been hosting a popular show on the coast for many years. 

What MCPB needs is a Chief Engineer. A really capable Chief Engineer, who is young and enthusiastic, and happy to come to work, and up on state-of-the-art radio operations, and by that person, of course, I don't mean Rich Culbertson. 

We need broadcast equipment that works. We need a broadcast signal that's always up. We need an end to dead air and scratchy signals. We need to replace Korean War-era equipment. 

We need to move the main studio to Ukiah. 

We need technology and social media for programmers, i.e. archived shows, podcasts, links to blogs, etc. We need to build digital platforms for programmers. 

What we don't need is an Executive Director or General Manager or Master Martinet, or whatever the MCPB Board decides to call John Coate. 

And we probably don't need Aigner or Steffen, either. 

We need for the people of Mendocino County to have control over programming choices, not just one person (Mary Aigner). We need for the MCPB membership to be involved in operations and programming. 

We need a changing of the guard. We need fresh faces. We need new ideas. We need radical new ideas. 

Most of all we need a new business model. 

The old business model -- the Sean Donovan Business Model -- is broken. It gave lifetime job security for a few people. But it stopped working a long time ago. 

I think Marco speaks to all of that. 

And, Tim, make no mistake about it: MCPB is our radio station, too. We're not going to " wish or moralize [ourselves] a better radio organization. and fund it," as you so blithely suggest. 

Thank you. 

John 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Tim Gregory" <tgregory at saber.net> 
To: "kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org> 
Cc: discussion at lists.mcn.org 
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2015 10:26:05 AM 
Subject: [Kzyxtalk] Think it through before giving money to KZYX. 

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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