[Kzyxtalk] [MCN-Discussion]- KZYX-License-Program Director who Silences Volunteers

[Marco McClean]

On 6/17/2015 5:37 PM, Daney Dawson wrote:
> I am not passing judgement on the current PD.  I have no personal experience other than what I hear over the radio, and like I said, it's been a pretty special community resource for a few decades now.  I like most of the programming. There are people who claim that the current PD has not earned her salary, and is difficult.  That may or may not be true, but my point is that in general, any person who takes on a more or less full time job with that kind of responsibility, be it station manager or program director, deserves a decent salary.  That's all.

     I think a point you're missing, Daney, is that the whole purpose of 
the station isn't to provide a good living for Mary Aigner or David 
Steffen or [fill in blank]. The purpose of the station is to provide a 
place for talented local people to do radio.

     Mary should be paid by the hour, for hours actually in service of 
the station, and not for just showing up and making busy-work for 
herself. So should all the airpeople. That's the way it was at KMFB, 
which had the same broadcast reach as KZYX and cost a fourth the money 
to operate, even after paying /all the airpeople and engineers/ and Bob 
Woelfel, who did the job that Mary Aigner does and also did the job that 
John Coate did (before John recently fled KZYX) and also did the jobs of 
David Steffen and Rich Culbertson, and Bob Woelfel didn't have the 
benefit of a grant from Uncle Sugar to keep KMFB afloat, and he wasn't 
even slightly frazzled by overwork. He came to work with a spring in his 
step and enjoyed being there. That's what competence looks like. Sure, 
everyone should be paid for what they do for KZYX. If airpeople don't 
get at least a four-hour day, they should get an appropriate stipend, 
like the way it works at a theater company or a musical gig. Imagine if 
every time you drag your bass out and play a gig, a bunch of money goes 
to your manager, and the manager gets a grant from the government to 
manage you (!), and you never see a penny of that money (!), and then 
for three weeks of every year when you go to play your gig you have to 
beg your audience for extra money (for your manager) so the great music 
you're playing can keep coming. I mean, just imagine it. How long does 
that go on before you notice?

     When Mary Massey and others (and I) point out how bad and, yes, 
incompetent everyone in the management loop has always been at KZYX, we 
are saying it straight. Radio is cheap. KZYX' essential operating budget 
has always been entirely covered twice over by the annual CPB grant, and 
yet they consistently manage to spray at least four times that into the 
aether every year and so still have to beg for money because they're 
hanging on by their fingernails. That is appallingly bad management on 
the parts not only of the currently and formerly paid managers but the 
board itself for empowering those incompetent and in many cases petty 
and hateful and grudge-keeping managers and officers.

     Daney, of course you like what you hear on the air. It's easy to 
populate a radio station with people and shows more funky and 
interestingly varied in scope and taste than on commercial radio. And 
the NPR shows you love so much play themselves once they're contracted 
for and their addresses and streams are entered into the computer 
system, and they're paid for out of the CPB grant, no management time 
required. With better, more humane, more /human/ management everything 
you like about KZYX would still be there, as well as more that you don't 
even know about to like because so far it's been prevented from reaching 
your ears.

     I'm also one of many with personal negative experience with John 
Coate and Mary Aigner. I wouldn't hire either of them to wield power 
over others, but I'd let them have airtime to do a show if they were 
good at it or even if they weren't but wanted to enough to /get/ good at 
it. I understand Mary likes to play Grateful Dead songs over and over. 
Now, I'm tired of the Grateful Dead --who isn't?-- but she likes it, and 
a few other people liked it enough for decades to pay thousands of 
dollars a ticket to get stoned and watch the surviving members noodle 
around in projected paisleys and gelatin washes for a couple of hours 
and then drive home in their sensible Volvos, so I am like you in not 
passing judgment.

     John Coate was never interested in radio at all. Why do you suppose 
they hired him? And gave him half a million dollars?

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