[Kzyxtalk] Letter to the MCPB (KZYX) board of directors. Reply requested.

[Marco McClean]

A few thoughts on the MCPB (KZYX) board meeting in the pool table and 
ice machine room of the Cliff House in Fort Bragg on Monday, May 2.

The income statement slapped together for the meeting shows something 
like $540,000+ to run the station this year, and every year before it's 
similarly enormous-- $500,000 or $600,000-- I may be wrong but I think 
one year it was $675,000. That's many times what it should cost. 
(Compare: KNYO does the whole job for $12,000 a year.) So where are all 
those mysterious extra hundreds of thousands of dollars going every 
year? We're going to find out at some point; you might as well come 
clean now. I know where $140,000-to-$190,000 have been coming /from/ 
every year --your tax-derived CPB grant, that bailed you out and saved 
you from utter failure every year of MCPB's existence-- but you're still 
getting that grant (and still failing were it to vanish) so...?  And 
it's nice that you're paying lip service again to serving the Native 
American population by squirting the Native American News podcast 
through the transmitter, but that's a matter of a few mouse clicks to 
schedule it in the automation and from then on it just cues up and plays 
itself, and those mouse clicks were omitted by the last couple of people 
you unwisely picked to pay to make decisions at the station, and that 
came back to bite you when you lost $40,000 of your grant complement 
this fiscal year because of not meeting a BOLDFACED REQUIREMENT to serve 
the local Native American population.* It's nice of Lorraine to have 
noticed and clicked that mouse, and maybe next year CPB will turn the 
money flow back up to where it was, but that's all that amounts to: 
getting back on the higher tier teat on the mutant public udder you're 
used to, because you can't make it without Uncle Sugar, because you 
won't even try to learn how. As long as KZYX is supported by tax money, 
everyone in the listening area should have a vote on how things go 
there, and a truly complete financial breakdown should be published. I 
heard that several recent years of complete financial records are still 
being withheld from even the paying members.

*Here's how I'd do it. Call the local Councils of Tribal Elders, or 
whatever they call themselves --call a casino and find out; ask to speak 
to Vinny or Chooch-- offer them regular airtime for free, and send them 
each a fully configured suitcase studio ($300), and maybe a nice fruit 
basket. And put them on the air.

Meg, your agenda-item thank-you to John Sakowitz for his years of 
service on the board, where you ended with a very low but recordable 
kvetch about how expensive it was to have him to kick around (now that 
you don't have to anymore) said volumes about your misplaced focus. KZYX 
has always been hemorrhaging money because of bad management that Sako 
has always been trying to get to the bottom of and you thwarted him at 
every turn, and the legal expenses you incurred punching your own self 
in the face to swat away the pesky fly of the FCC complaint were your 
cabal's own fault. John Sakowicz didn't cost you that money; you did. 
You should smile sheepishly and admit it. And get some ice on that eye. 
Ice is civilization.

I remember yez all praising John Coate to the skies about what a genius 
he was at running the station, and I remember all the propaganda he 
produced on his own behalf for the web page, including about putting 
thousands and thousands of dollars and so much work into making things 
reliable --professional battery backup systems, and so on-- and a 
photograph of him on a ladder with the breeze ruffling his hair-- and 
still when the power flinks off for ten minutes so does the entire radio 
station. It isn't that it's such a big deal to have dead air or static 
for ten minutes every once in awhile, it's rather that's just another 
example of what terrible judges of character and quality and expertise 
you boardmember insiders have been when you chose people to be 
essentially the station's hood ornament. John Coate was a /disaster/ for 
KZYX, in a long line of similar disasters. It's still too soon to tell 
about Lorraine but, people, your track record is not good.

And the praise and applause I read about for Mary Aigner's reign when 
she finally relinquished her deathgrip on things... Meg, outside your 
bubble, Mary Aigner is nearly universally reviled, and for strong 
reasons. I don't know if you saw the Johnny Depp /Alice In Wonderland/, 
but Helena Bonham Carter (the Red Queen-- "Off with their heads!") in 
that film is an uncanny portrayal of Mary Aigner in mannerisms and 
persona, to anyone paying attention. And it's a testament to the 
chilling attitude she engendered at KZYX that the airpeople who hated 
and feared her during her power still fear to speak up about it, and 
about their issues with bad station policy going forward. Like the 
inability of you people to recognize that Safe Harbor is the law. It's 
the law-- it's not something the jury's still out about; it's not a gray 
area; go to the FCC's site and read it. It's been the law for decades. 
Nobody at the FCC gives a rusty God damn if you swear during Safe Harbor 
hours.

I heard a couple of people whining about how /hard/ it is to run a radio 
station. It's not, actually. But if it's that hard for /you/, if it's 
just so /difficult/, maybe it has something to do with the way you're 
doing it; I mean, maybe you're just really bad at it and you should look 
around and turn your efforts to something that's not so hard for you. 
I've run newspapers that were much more complicated operations than 
KZYX, and much more open to letting people in to do what they need to 
do, and --you talk about egos? these were /writers/. A radio station is 
a collection of equipment that, set up properly, is as reliable as a 
refrigerator, as easy to use as a refrigerator, for any number of 
operators, and only slightly more expensive than a refrigerator to leave 
plugged in and running. Thousands of dollars a month for just phones and 
internet? That is a total failure of imagination. And the discussion 
about buying special equipment and the difficulty of training people to 
do a remote broadcast or two over the course of the next year? Half the 
people at KNYO do a remote broadcast once or twice a week each, with 
their own computers and mics and mixers --I do one myself every two 
weeks-- and the instruction sheet has two lines: 1. Open B.U.T.T.*, 
check levels, look at clock, press start. 2. To end your show, press stop.

*Broadcast Using This Tool, a free streaming program that sends your 
sound through the web to the radio transmitter.

About the thing I keep hearing from KZYX cheerleaders and, the other 
day, from Lorraine-- that the airpeople don't /want/ to be paid: Perform 
this thought experiment with me: pay the airpeople right now for their 
work for the past year. Now imagine how many of them will tear up a 
check for hundreds of dollars and say your money's no good here, and how 
many more of them will smile happily and spend it on something they need 
to live, or a visit to the dentist, or a new set of tires. And if, as a 
couple of your entitled cheerleading sycophants have said,  it's a 
piddling amount of money so why bother? Well, if it's that piddling an 
amount, and it is to you, why not just pay it? And if the added 
bookkeeping is the objection, let the airpeople log on to the 
bookkeeper's website and submit their time in chunks or all at once, 
whenever it's convenient, and let a service like PayTrust send out the 
checks. And let the bookkeeper use her bookkeeping program to send out 
the 1099 forms at the end of each year.

Bob Page, the one with the throat ailment, who was leaving being on the 
board, said essentially that there's no reason to ever say anything that 
upsets people in a meeting, that it's not helpful. In fact, the person 
he directed his stage-whisper at, Derek Hoyle, had been telling nothing 
but the necessarily told truth, as had been the behoodied Mister Wright, 
who yez called the cops on and had them twist his arms behind his back 
and hustle him away. Stuart Campbell /is/ responsible for a great deal 
of what was very wrong with the so-called old regime, as well as for the 
abysmal administrative mess left for Lorraine to navigate in her first 
month. And there he is on the board again, where he really, really 
doesn't belong. Where is there any indication that he'll help or 
properly represent the airpeople any more than he did last time? And the 
paying members, much less the taxpayers who've been bailing out MCPB 
every year, see above, /were not given the opportunity to vote either 
for or against him/. Keep that in mind. If he ever votes on or even 
attempts to use his position on the board to influence you on any issue 
that doesn't directly relate to proper treatment of the airpeople, 
that's not justice nor any kind of democracy, and it's probably also not 
legal.

But there he is on the board, so-- Stuart, if you'll arse yourself to 
take a step in the direction of doing what you're at least on paper in 
the job to do, look into Romantic Rahoolio's having made an airperson 
cry by berating her, nearly his first act as so-called program director. 
Look into how he threw a monkey wrench into the prospect of having Jerry 
Fraley stick around and make and keep various systems of the station 
attached in the right places and functioning properly for the airpeople. 
Instead, after Jerry graciously pulls your chestnuts out of the fire one 
last time he's likely gone for good. You're the airpeople's 
representative, Stuart. Represent the airpeople. And confront the rest 
of the board to get the airpeople paid what they're worth, because the 
ones preparing for and doing their shows are why the station's there in 
the first, second and last place. And when my show is on KZYX, I will 
expect to be paid.

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