[Kzyxtalk] Jim Heid's and Tim Gregory's dismissive chortles at the idea of paying workers to work.

[Marco McClean]

Jim Heid <jim at heidsite.com> wrote:

 > *Dismissive chortle*... Actually, lets do a little math...


Okay, let's, Jim. The fiscal year before this one, MCPB (corp. that 
manages KZYX) pissed away $575,000, much of it mysteriously, hence the 
reasonable request for detailed information, and $170,000 of that came 
from a grant of federal tax money. I guess those are usual figures, 
though not long ago MCPB had a fiscal year where it pissed away 
/three-quarters-of-a-million-dollars/.


When I listed all the real expenses of running and maintaining KZYX, 
including everything --and I mean everything: paperwork and rent and 
paint and music publishers' fees and tower rental and equipment 
maintenance, as well as water and electricity and phone lines-- it was 
easily covered, and then some!, by just the yearly CPB grant. A truly 
bare-bones operation like KNYO has essentially everything KZYX has, 
except the right to use a high-power transmitter, and KNYO spent just 
$12,000 over the same period. Compare. And KZYX broke down about the 
same number of times as KNYO, and in many of the same ways.


A big part of the difference ($575,000 vs $12,000) is: the handful of 
office people at KZYX are paid a quarter of a million dollars a year to 
show up and sit in the office. That's many times what it would take to 
pay all the airpeople to do their shows. Bob Young of KNYO performs all 
the essential tasks of /everyone/ in the KZYX office, and he does it 
while helping with his partner's serious health adventure, and he has 
time left over to have a life, and he is paid nothing. So, Jim, your 
attitude of awe and respect for the work/value ratio of the pack of KZYX 
office drones is puzzling. Surely Lorraine Dechter alone can easily 
cover it all in return for her salary. Why would you think she can't?


Also, when you characterize $700 or even $1,000 a year per airperson as 
piffle, you can't be thinking of people I know. People who work for a 
living don't think of $20 dollars here and $30 there for this job or 
that in terms of how little each gig adds up to at the end of the year 
and then spit on it. We think of it in terms of: when I leave paying 
work to do a two-hour show (that I prepared for days to do) I have $20 
to pay for gas to get to the radio station and food to eat when I get 
home and save up for a new microphone or computer part to make the show 
better.


And Tim Gregory blathers that /MCPB is a corporation and so it needs to 
make a lot of money or else lose market share to video games/. What can 
be said to that? The educational band of the FM spectrum was set aside 
to do things commercial radio and its money-centric attitude makes 
impossible, because if it hadn't been set aside, there would be nothing 
but KUNKs and Fox Newses up and down the dial. The noncommercial 
left-hand end of FM isn't there to play Monopoly with; it's there for 
ordinary local people to further art and science and music and education 
and public affairs and even whimsy and annoying self-conscious nonsense.


Radio is cheap. Little churches own whole broadcasting networks of radio 
stations. Once a station has a broadcast license, and the transmission 
equipment has been paid for --which was all accomplished for KZYX 
twenty-six years ago-- it costs pennies an hour to operate. If KZYX has 
so much money to throw away, and apparently it does, why not pay the 
local people who do the work? Why constantly lie that that's impossible, 
when so many shows from out of the area are paid for without your 
batting an eye?


Again, if you don't want or need the money for your work, fine. See that 
someone who does actually gets it, for a change.


Further, Jim, you write: "/So who do you propose handles the logistics 
of adjusting pay depending on whether a programmer was able to do his or 
her usual shifts? Or does the station install a time clock? What fun 
THAT would be. Or does the station institute some kind of bureacratic 
process of figuring out how much content a programmer produced, then 
paying him or her accordingly? Who's going to tackle that adventure? One 
of the employees you?re proposing to do away with? Do weekends and 
holidays warrant overtime? And what about taxes: are each of those 90 
programmers going to want to complicate their tax returns by including 
1099 income? Do each of those 90 programmers even FILE a return now? 
What about worker's comp and the other legal liabilities that the 
station would incur if it were to hire 90 part-time employees? ...Chortle."/


Jim, you're being deliberately obtuse. There's a schedule on the 
station's web page that says when each airperson is sitting at the 
microphone. It's plain as day; it's already in a spreadsheet; I'm 
looking at it right now. It's simpler than the pay schedule of even the 
smallest theater company, and at Mendocino Theater Company, one of the 
places where I work, a single bookkeeper manages the task in a short 
afternoon per month using a ten-year-old computer. Workers and 
performers and designers and techies are paid what's called a stipend. 
The company has insurance. And theater people do their taxes just like 
everyone else does. The company is a nonprofit, just like KZYX; unlike 
KZYX it doesn't get $160,000 a year from taxpayers, but it manages 
nonetheless. I think your bookkeeper can handle it.


Speaking of which: Mendocino Theater Company's first play of the 2016 
season, /Quills/, about the Marquis de Sade in the booby hatch, opens 
this week. For info call the box office: 707-937-4477, or go to 
http://MendocinoTheatre.org


--

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