[Kzyxtalk] A modest proposal regarding KZYX.

[sako4 at comcast.net]

Marco, 

Your idea is brilliant -- take the pot of money at KZYX spent on staff salaries (approximately $250,000) and divide it equally among staff, programmers, fundraisers, etc., according to hours worked. I'm on the KZYX Board, and I will submit your idea as an agenda item for discussion at the next meeting in Fort Bragg. 

No doubt I'll be shot down, but I'll make the request for the record. Both the FCC and CPB are now paying close attention to the following: 


    * KZYX management's oppressive business practices -- total control of programming decisions by management; also Korean War-era, failing equipment; also the purging of any programmer that dares to question management, also the battery of two women on station premises and the refusal by management to investigate; and 
    * KZYX's secret finances -- staff salaries are not disclosed; also money for the Ukiah studio, about $19,000 total from three sources, is missing; also financial reporting (line items) is inconsistent vis-a-vis the station's audit, the station's tax returns , and the general manager's report. 

John 


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

From: "Marco McClean" <memo at mcn.org> 
To: "kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org> 
Cc: discussion at lists.mcn.org 
Sent: Thursday, January 8, 2015 11:39:43 PM 
Subject: [Kzyxtalk] A modest proposal regarding KZYX. 

Dennis O'Brien wrote: 
>..There is a general desire to have a face-to-face meeting of some 
kind in the 
>near future to discuss issues and candidates for the next MCPB/KZYX board 
>election. The power of the Programming Council to overrule the Program 
>Director has already leaped to the top of the discussion... Authority 
for hiring 
>and firing will be returned to the Board of Directors... 

Dennis, Marco here. When you get a little power to effect some 
change, I recommend that you make it a point to pay airpeople at the 
same rate per hour actually worked as management (news people and 
fundraising people too) are paid. That doesn't mean make money appear 
from nowhere; it means strip KZYX management of its salaries and perks 
and divide the freed-up $100,000-plus per year among the people actually 
doing what the radio station is there to do in the first place. 
The station has a bookkeeper. The bookkeeper has a computer and 
bookkeeping software. A schedule exists of who's on the air and for how 
long each per month. Beginning to pay them is is a trivial task that 
could be implemented overnight. Airpeople would get tax forms, answer a 
couple of questions about how many dependents to claim, and so on. And 
if airpeople don't want or need the money, they can say so and donate it 
to the station. Theater companies I've worked for have a more 
complicated time of it than KZYX would, and bookkeeping is not a problem 
for them. 
I don't know what Mary would do, or the fundraising guy, but when 
John Coate takes a hike, which he will instantly his personal money 
spigot slows to a trickle(*), you'll get a better manager, one who has a 
background in radio and loves radio and /does/ radio. I can think of 
several just off the top of my head. 

(*)He'd fight it, though, wouldn't he? Look at how he's dug himself in 
and erected bulwarks around. He's not just the general manager-- isn't 
he also CEO now? CEO of Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Corp.? I 
think you'd have to change out nearly the entire board. 

My own show is currently running on a station (KNYO-LP) whose 
manager doesn't take any pay at all. He can do that because managing a 
radio station is dead easy. There are some routine tasks that must be 
done once a month, and there are some routine tasks that must be done 
once or twice a year. Other than that, when something breaks you try to 
fix it and if you're not qualified you telephone the engineer. And why 
would any station need a manager /and/ a program director? When an 
airperson can't make his shift he can call someone else to do it or let 
automation cover it. If an airperson is consistently absent because he 
doesn't care, give the airtime to someone else and spend three minutes 
editing the schedule on the web page and another three minutes emailing 
the bookkeeper. And done. When someone wants to do a radio show, you 
show them how to operating the equipment, give them a pep talk and a 
pamphlet and allocate their time slot. My experience listening to new 
radio people who are treated this way is that they do their first show 
and their friends tell them what was wrong with it, and the next show 
sounds like they've been doing it forever. And when something goes wrong 
it just isn't a big deal. It isn't the end of the world. It gets solved 
and they sail ahead. 
Several of my listeners emailed me and one called me after the last 
time I talked about all these things being not the way things are done 
at KZYX and each one said the same thing: "$60,000 isn't very much for a 
manager. That doesn't sound like too much." But it really is too much. 
It's infinitely more than the airpeople are being paid. At KNYO I don't 
mind not being paid, mainly because no-one with power over my project is 
being paid any more than I am, and the person with power over my project 
never wields it. I'm free to do my work and my art and never have to 
worry that a manager will drunk-call me at two in the morning and start 
barking at me how to do /my/ show, or tell me I can't have certain 
guests on, or threaten me that if I talk about station business or some 
sensitive subject or even let a guest talk about it I'll lose my 
airtime. I don't have to worry about anything like that; I can do the 
show I came to do. Contrast that with KZYX, which all the way from the 
beginning has never been right about these things, has always done 
things the hard, oppressive way. And why is that? I really wonder. 

Also, just the general manager's salary at KZYX is eight to ten 
times the entire operating budget of KNYO. 

KZYX in the noncommercial educational band. It exists by law to do 
things you can't do on commercial radio. And yet all the many years I 
was at KMFB, which was commercial radio, in the commercial band, I was 
way more free to do the best I could by my lights than anyone has ever 
been on KZYX. Yes, let's see what can be done to liberate things over 
there, where they've received literally millions of taxpayers' dollars 
in grants because they promised to make radio freedom possible and then 
flushed a great deal of that money away in managers' salaries. 

Oh! Speaking of which, Dennis, if there's broadband service wherever 
you have your meeting, you can put the meeting on the air live on KZYX 
with a free program for Linux and Windows (and probably Mac) that I've 
been using to do my KNYO show by remote when I'm out of town. It's 
called B.U.T.T. (Broadcast Using This Tool). It installs in five 
minutes, including typing in streaming settings (you can copy and paste 
them in), and thereafter it's one click and you're on the air. The 
engineer can set it up so you don't even need anyone in the studio at 
the station. I'd think a discussion of issues and candidates would be 
pretty good radio and fit right in with the mission of KZYX. Tell John 
Coate and Mary Aigner you want to do it and see what they say. 

Okay, tired of this now. Pressing send. I have to go back to work. 

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

http:/MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com 






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