[Kzyxtalk] News about KZYX.

[Marco McClean]

  News about KZYX
--by Marco McClean

     Here's a video that explains why it's important to talk about how 
much money everyone is paid, no matter where you work:
http://tinyurl.com/TellYourPay

     I was just thinking about how MCPB pays just Mary Aigner twice the 
money that it pays for all the NPR shows and all the local shows put 
together. And for what? The NPR and other syndicated shows play 
themselves (and often repeat over and over, week after week), and the 
local airpeople certainly play themselves. What exactly is Mary doing 
for the station that makes her worth half the entire yearly pot of 
membership dues, where all the local airpeople who are actually doing 
what the station is there for in the first place, producing and airing 
their shows --under Mary's thumb, yet-- get paid nothing at all, zero 
percent of even the minimum legal hourly rate, for their skill and 
talent and dedication and preparation, and on top of being paid zero per 
hour, they don't even get zero per hour for the legal-minimum four hour day.

     And MCPB is advertising for a new general manager who will be paid 
$5,000 A MONTH to do a short afternoon's paperwork per week. That's 
about /five hundred dollars per hour/. What I get from the advertisement 
is that the main responsibility of the general manager they're looking 
for is to somehow meditate enough money into being for the station to 
coast along in its current state of expensive, oppressive mediocrity. 
(Background in nonprofit fundraising, check. Importance placed on 
knowledge of and accomplishments and innovations in media in general and 
creative educational radio in particular, not so much.)

     Radio is cheaper and easier to do than any other business besides a 
church. Once the license is acquired and the big-ticket equipment is 
paid for --and for KZYX this was covered a quarter-century ago-- it 
costs little more to operate and maintain radio as to heat and light the 
space you do it in. And, just as with a church or charity, paying a few 
people at the very top very well to fake the need for a mysteriously 
huge cash flow is wrong. KZYX somehow blew through $575,000 last year 
alone, about a third of that being tax derived in the form of the CPB 
grant. That makes it three times as wrong. Think of the Corporation for 
Public Broadcasting grant as an annual bailout without which KZYX would 
have sunk below the waves every year of its existence; it is /managed 
that badly/ compared to other little radio stations. And it's managed 
that badly by people who brag on their websites and Facebook pages and 
resumes that they've done a great job by edging the books slightly into 
the black, where other little stations without the benefit of any 
$190,000-a-year bailout at all have been all along.

     With proper management paid by the hour for hours actually worked, 
the airpeople can be paid. They should be paid. The MCPB directors who 
perpetuate the situation where the airpeople are not paid are bad both 
in the sense of being bad people and being incompetent, and they should 
feel bad. Let's talk about that on the air, on KZYX. Let's get the KZYX 
so-called news department involved, because that's news.

     Here's something like what I have in mind. It's a news article 
about a similar situation.
http://tinyurl.com/ThisIsLikeThat

     Of course something just like that should be done regarding Fort 
Bragg City Hall, and Ukiah, and the County Schools racket, and so on, 
and to some extent the Anderson Valley Advertiser admirably takes on 
that sort of thing. It's news when any supposedly public organization is 
spending so much more money on top people's salaries and perks and 
mystery expenses than on what the organization pretends it's there to 
do. Here's a model piece of work for the KZYX news department to look 
at-- an article about charities that behave the way KZYX management does:
http://tinyurl.com/Just25OfThem

p.s. I just read email from John Sakowicz to another boardmember, that 
he copied to me to read because he mentioned me. Just this part of it 
struck me as being exactly true, exactly as written, and I think it's 
important for dues-paying station members (part owners) and the general 
public (paying with our taxes whether we like it or not) to know:

     "The truth of the matter is that Mary Aigner is the shot caller 
around here. She keeps the station in Philo, where she lives, and has 
defeated the move to Ukiah. She determines programming. She censors the 
content of shows by imposing policies like "no safe harbor". She purges 
her critics who have shows, me among them. She thwarts our 2,100 members 
from communicating with one another and organizing. She disparages, 
insults, and marginalizes those members who are reform-minded. She 
influences Board elections. She operates in secret. She is 
passive-aggressive. She is snarky. And when Aigner is called out by the 
likes of me, Marco McClean, Norman De Vall, Dennis O'Brien, Mary Massey, 
Christina Aanestad, KC Meadows, Els Cooperrider, Doug McKenty, and many 
others, she puts on this act-- "Poor me. Help. I'm just a working woman. 
I'm just a single mother who never got child support. Help. Save me from 
these bad people." --and the Board dutifully comes to her rescue."

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