[Kzyxtalk] Marco McClean to KZYX board

[King Collins]

Marco McClean writes in the AVA, Feb. 11, 2015:

Editor,

A note to the board members of KZYX. (Written email reply requested from each board member.)

Marco here. One thing that struck me during the Fort Bragg MCPB board meeting was how board members and their friends in the crowd so clearly felt that it's ridiculous to even consider restructuring to be able to pay airpeople. But consider: KZYX is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to retain superfluous bureaucrats who are /not/ talented people sitting at a microphone connected to a transmitter. And paying nothing to those who are. John Coate is getting $60,000 per year —that's half a million dollars ($500,000) in a little over eight years — and what is he working on now? A web jukebox so a few people can click to hear shows on demand. Gimcracks and gewgaws that have nothing to do with radio. And the result is the station has to limp along on old, unreliable equipment that frequently fails utterly. Think of how much equipment could simply be bought new and replaced on a regular schedule, like changing the oil in your car, if you weren't paying just John Coate quite so much, if you were instead paying him by the hour for the few basic tasks that are actually required of a radio station manager, that KNYO's manager, say, performs in an afternoon per month. And then there's David Steffen— KZYX's "Business Support Coordinator"? Why would a non-profit community radio station need a business support coordinator, whatever that is, and pay him $40,000 a year, yet? And Mary Aigner the program director — what is she doing that's worth whatever you're paying her? If that's also $40,000 a year, then divide that by $50 and you get 800 (eight hundred) yearly memberships diverted to go just to Mary— for what, exactly, compared to someone preparing all during the week, every week, to do a live show the best he or she can and then doing it. Why should management be paid so exorbitantly merely to show up, and airpeople who show up and in addition do radio not be paid at all?

If you really want to further dilute your radio mission in a web startup adventure, beyond just having a website with the show and events schedule on it, then why do you even need the broadcast license? A scarce educational-band radio broadcast license to blanket the county should be held by people dedicated to doing radio. And radio is cheap. At ten cents per kilowatt-hour and figuring in waste heat your 1,000-watt main transmitter costs only about $5 a day to operate. Your two 30-watt translator stations together cost less than fifty cents a day. I think you've forgotten this, if you ever knew it. Your entire operation— the main transmitter, the STLs, the translator stations, tower fees, music publisher fees, power and water, phones, internet service, all the studios, engineering service and pay for airpeople— can be well-maintained for about a third of the money you're burning now in counterproductive busy-work. You might never have to do more than one egregiously unlistenable pledge week per year ever again, let alone three or four. The first step to making KZYX a real community radio station for Mendocino County is to cut the fat at the top.

And I'd be on about this even if my show were on KZYX. It's not. I want to ask Stuart Campbell a few questions now. Stuart, is your show worthwhile and interesting and an asset to the station? Are you good at it, and are you proud of the show? Now, try to put yourself in my shoes. Imagine you weren't on the board of directors, that you brought your show as a finished proven product to KZYX, and you waited and waited —waited for years— and when you asked what progress was being made to put your show on the schedule you got no answer at all. And when you wrote to the manager, he told you /he/ wasn't the program director. And when you asked, "What do I have to do to get my show on KZYX?" the manager said, "I guess you have to convince Mary." And when you stopped by the station to talk about it you were treated as though you were an unwanted intrusion and told to use the telephone next time. What would you do then? Go to the board of directors? They'd tell you they have no control over who's on the air and who's not. Then what would you do? Really — it's a Kafka story you have set up there, Stuart, and it's been that way since the beginning.

I waited a long time to speak up. Much longer than I think any of you would have. The situation has got to change. And you have to change it, because if not you, who? And if not now, when? And if not at all, why not?

I want and deserve a written reply from each board member. I'll read the replies on my show on KNYO in Fort Bragg, whose entire yearly budget — for everything — is about a fifth of just what you're paying your general manager.

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

* * * *