[Kzyxtalk] A modest proposal regarding KZYX.

Fri Jan 9 08:40:41 PST 2015

Great to hear from you all. Marco, I am constantly shocked we have never met and happy to see you come out of the woodwork to participate in this forum.

I do not know that eliminating management salary and paying all other airtime and fundraising volunteers is feasible but will say that salary adjustments should occur in order to free up money for the News DepArtment which I feel should be the priority. 

I never understood why Coate chose to eliminate the news director position when the station fell into debt rather than laying off the program director as many stations combine the management/PD jobs (which as you point out can easily be done by one person) and local news is a huge part of the mission of KZYX.

Brining back the local news as a big part of the stations mandate will be part of my campaign. With a little rearranging of salary as you suggest, the station could easily afford a strong news department.  I do not understand why this is not a priority.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 9, 2015, at 8:10 AM, sako4 at comcast.net wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 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.
> 
> ------------
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> http:/MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
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