[Kzyxtalk] Jim Heid's continued confusion.

[Marco McClean]

  Jim Heid <jim at heidsite.com> wrote

 > In order to pay programmers for specific shows they did, there would 
have to be an onerous, bureaucratic system in place to track who did 
what. Your comparisons with the (wonderful) Mendocino Theater Company 
are a false equivalency.


     Not false at all. Jim, perfect accuracy in a stipend isn't 
important. When I do a sound job for the theater company, or an actor 
commits to a play, or a lighting crew puts up and adjusts and 
coordinates lighting, or an equipment operator shows up night after 
night to operate equipment, and so on, we know it's not going to mean 
very much money for us --often it depends on how well the play does-- 
but we put our best effort into it and don't bean-count about how much 
extra time and sweat we have to put in to fix something that goes wrong 
or adapt to something that changes. Or if a key person gets sick or her 
mom dies and she has to go to Michigan and someone else comes in. If a 
particular job turns out to be easier than supposed and goes like 
clockwork, then of course that's good too. That's the way it should be 
at KZYX, which, by the way, can be handily managed by Lorraine Dechter 
alone. You don't need a separate program director being paid the 
equivalent of 800 yearly $50 memberships. Lorraine can do that. She's 
right there. You don't need a "business underwriting coordinator" (who 
absorbs another 600-800 memberships. Lorraine can do that. She can 
answer the office phone and make her own coffee and teach a new deejay 
to use the mixing board and refer a prospective newsperson to a Google 
search for how to do news. For decades Bob Woelfel calmly did all those 
things and more at KMFB, and for much less money than Lorraine is paid, 
and under much more pressure. I'm tired of the suggestion that a woman 
can't do the job a man can do, because that's bullshit.


     KZYX involves /so ludicrously much constantly flushing money/, only 
beginning with the yearly six-figure CPB grant, that the workers should 
get a fair share of it, especially when you, as an airperson, are 
dragooned into using your show to beg for money for the station. Proper 
management can fully pay for every aspect of the station's operation and 
upkeep just out of the grant. Everything after that is gravy and, 
especially since MCPB is a nonprofit corporation, the people doing the 
real work, doing the shows that go out on the air, deserve a share.


     Strain a little and turn your attention to why that basic level of 
honest, open, proper management hasn't been achieved yet in twenty-six 
years by MCPB's insular, secretive, paranoid board of directors.


And Jim Heid wrote:

 > Your nearly 1000-word email went off on a lot of tangents that had 
nothing to do with your original argument that the $60,000 GM salary 
would cover paying 90 programmers anything more than $2 a day for their 
efforts. You still haven?t spelled out how that would work.


     Jim, my original argument, stated over and over down the years: if 
the men and women and fresh-faced kids doing the work are wonderful for 
doing it for nothing, then the bosses who are killing time in the office 
should offer to be similarly wonderful. And they never offer that, and 
nothing changes, and people like you stick up for this creepy cult-like 
system. /Of course/ the airpeople want to do it so much that they'll do 
it for nothing. That's the point.


     And you clearly have not grasped that the office people together 
suck not merely $60,000 out of the station for themselves every year, 
but closer to a quarter of a million dollars. How many times do I have 
to say it before is sinks in? Here, I'll shout: A QUARTER OF A MILLION 
DOLLARS. If the bosses are being paid fairly, then so should the 
airpeople be. If you insist on the bosses really being paid fairly, and 
I've heard you do so on several occasions, then be consistent and 
recognize that that the airpeople should also be paid fairly.


     Again, if your pledge drive makes its stated goal of $60,000, every 
dollar of it will go just to the manager's salary. That's what you're 
really asking people to donate money to, not to the upkeep of the 
station --the station is always already fully upkept with tax dollars-- 
and if you were honest that's what you'd be saying on the air.


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