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

[Tim Gregory]

hi, sheila...

i don't intend to linger here, but i want to be clear--don't let your personal
disappointments with this and that flaw of the station be co-opted/mispent on a bad
tactic. let them carry you to action BEYOND this election. HELP change happen. bring
MORE community in to listen, learn, speak AND vote.
---





Thank you Tim for your thoughtful and inclusive response.
There are other ways to support your community radio station than financial
donation.   I would like to see more community involvement through volunteering with
a Volunteer Coordinator be given a fee or wage for coordinating an open door policy.
At the recent Board meeting it was acknowledged that not much is being done
currently at that level besides attending meetings and sending emails. The result
was forward motion to revive a committee system that has been abandoned for at least
8 years. Those committees were designed to have community members on them to give a
broader perspective to working through the problems.
   The need for a community vision for the station is real. That takes time and
commitment to work out  a Strategic Plan for a ten year forward thinking
strengthening of the infrastructure and intent.
    Enjoying the programming and paying to support the access to favorite programs
is only one choice down a branched road. Think about the road less traveled as
it has its own special view.
      Let's end any mean spirited, back stabbing comments and deal with issues.
      I support more community choice in programming decisions and also greater
support to programmers. What do they want? Transportation stipends? Better
guidelines so as not to be afraid of losing their programs?(Job security) Ask
Stuart Campbell to do a better job of representing programmer issues to the
Board as their now token representative.
     By the way, I think Campbell is doing a admirable job in maintaining fairness
and integrity at the Board level but it is a job bigger than one man alone can
do.  As I said at a Board meeting in May, in 3+ years of attending meetings, I
have not heard a single reference to the programming meetings that are supposed
to be ongoing.
   I also support a reexamination of the current hierarchical structure in which a
few benefit off of the work of many.
    Like the nation of Bhutan,  let's look at our happiness quotient rather than the
corporate bottom line of financial success. From the view I 've had over the 15
years of involvement in the station, it has dropped considerably.  Change can be
slow or fast, but it is a necessary component of growth.
     In 2010 I attended the grassroots radio conference held in Garberville with
KMUD as its host station. It was enlightening to see the diversity of
management and community focused blends .
It would help shake out the cobwebs at KZYX if we could put in a bid to host a
similar conference and replace fear with alternatives.  Positive energy is always
fortifying.
                                        Sheila Dawn Tracy

Tim Gregory <tgregory at saber.net> wrote:

>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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