[Kzyxtalk] BC's defense of Mary Aigner.

[Marco McClean]

BC wrote:

 >Marco - I spoke for my appreciation of the job that Mary has done for 
25 years, not John C nor any other personalities. I suspect that you are 
a little reactive to Mary and the station situation in general, You 
could not do the job of program director if your life depended on it; 
the constant pressure would destroy you. Please understand the nature of 
the job of program director and give Mary a little appreciation and cut 
her some slack.


     Marco here. BC, you can't be that stupid. You're trolling me. I'm 
not rising to that.

     Or okay, I have a little time, I'll rise to that. John Coate and 
Mary Aigner, et al., are unnecessary, much less worth the literally 
millions of dollars they have sucked out of the station over the years 
nor all of the angst they have caused. Creatively and from a public 
access point of view the "station situation" has been a rat king since 
day one; what staff and board think of as the current crisis is only a 
crisis of the public's maybe becoming aware of how badly the board and 
management are tangled up in a ball of limbs and scabrous pink tails. I 
could easily do the job of John, Mary /and/ David by not requiring their 
level of moolah and so not having to work mostly to scratch for it, and 
by automating everything Mary does that looks to you like such an 
amazing feat. All the NPR and other shows from elsewhere are automated 
already. If you don't want to hurt these people's feelings by taking 
away their livelihood, why don't you consider the feelings of the people 
under their thumb actually doing their best to do radio, some of them 
for the same number of years, who have never been paid at all? Meaning 
everyone else at the fricking station.
     /Twenty/ radio stations better than KZYX could run very well 
dividing among them the $550,000 that the board and management of just 
KZYX piss away every year. Everything about the operation and control of 
the station is needlessly byzantine. Many people can tell you their own 
personal Kafka stories about KZYX. They can't do it on the air there 
even over the phone, because they'll get their friends' shows taken 
away, but they exist and their stories are Kafka stories, each one more 
outrageous than the last.

     To compare: Here's how simply and well it goes at KNYO: Someone 
--an old radio hand or a radio newby, it doesn't matter-- wants to do a 
show. She contacts Bob Young. He shows her how to use the equipment and 
shows her the page of actual FCC rules for the type of station. He adds 
her show to the schedule on the web page. Thereafter she lets herself in 
and does her shows. That's it. Done. Or, if she wants to do her show 
from someplace other than the office, and she has two or three hundred 
dollars to buy a refurb computer, a microphone or two and a USB mixer (I 
recommend one of the Behringer Xenix USB series), she can do it from 
anywhere there's reliable web access. I'm looking into whether it can be 
done via a single Android device; I'm not sure about that yet but it 
looks possible.
     KZYX gets a six-figure (!) government bailout check every year. 
KNYO gets zero government money-- and every dollar of local underwriting 
goes to feed the station; there are no salaries. And with that there are 
no disputes and no kickings-out for purely snarky personal reasons and 
no long-standing resentment to reciprocate and no waiting ten years to 
get on the air in the first place and no threats and no creepy personal 
politics and no secrets. When equipment breaks it cries for help and 
gets fixed. Every month Bob does the afternoon of work a station 
manager/program director/underwriting-coordinator really needs to do. 
Things change, people come in and go out, and every year it gets better 
and sounds better.
     From what I understand it's similar at KMEC. KMEC's entire yearly 
budget is $15,000. Check out their web page and operation and schedule 
of fine shows. There's no Mary Aigner or John Coate at KNYO or KMEC 
because there doesn't need to be a Mary Aigner or a John Coate in any 
radio station anywhere.

     Speaking of which, I just went to the KZYX webpage, where John 
Coate, whose $60,000/year salary, and for what?, is dependent on the 
board, posted his justification for past and present meddling in 
elections for seats on that very board. I'll paraphrase: "The board says 
I'm golden, so /bbhhpht/."

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