[Kzyxtalk] A clear choice. Help out real radio, KMEC and KNYO.

[Marco McClean]

A clear choice. Help out real radio, KMEC and KNYO.


KZYX is run by Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, a corporation run 
by people so inept that, even with $140,000 to $190,000 every year in 
tax-derived CPB bailout money, it (corporate speech) claims it can't 
afford to pay good local airpeople to do their shows and it even 
requires them to use their airtime to beg for even more money to pour 
down the rat-hole of its secretive, Nixonian administration. Somehow 
--and they've never given an open accounting as to exactly how-- they 
blow well over half a million dollars every year, with nothing to show 
for it. One year not too long ago they managed the magic trick of 
spending over three-quarters of a million dollars. And I repeat: they 
don't pay their airpeople, and they refuse to even consider paying them.


When you're smarmily reminded by KZYX by mail or on the air of how 
important it is for you to donate and become a member to keep the great 
shows on the air (as they put it), they are lying to you. There's no 
other word for it: they are big fat liars.


KMEC in Ukiah gets by on $20,000 a year. They don't get any government 
grant. They need your money much more than KZYX does. KNYO in Fort Bragg 
gets by on between ten and twelve thousand a year. They don't get a 
government grant. They also need your money more than KZYX does. There's 
rent on the storefront performance space, and electricity, and city 
water to flush the toilet and wash your hands, and so on. If KNYO had 
just a little more money it could have a much better mixing board in the 
main place and more guest microphones, and it wouldn't cost much to 
power-blackout-proof the transmitter and every one of the many satellite 
studios KNYO airpeople use.


Support KMEC: http://kmecradio.org


Support KNYO: http://knyo.org


Also, if you have a great show to offer and you take it to KZYX, they 
will not schedule it. They will keep on syndicated shows from Boston and 
Minnesota, and they will run and rerun the same recorded syndicated 
shows over and over in the night, and they will keep on ossified 
airpeople who show up with nothing, no preparation, no dedication, who 
sleepwalk through their airtime, and they will put you off for years, 
ignore you and/or insult you, and when you point this out they will go, 
/See? We don't want someone on KZYX who gets upset after being pissed on 
and treated with disdain for a quarter of a century. We were right all 
along to exclude you and your work. Ta ta./


If you take your show to KMEC or KNYO, they will make an effort to 
schedule it. Here's my experience: When I brought my show (Memo of the 
Air: Good Night Radio) to KMFB in early 1997, Bob Woelfel told me how 
much underwriting I had to bring in to pay for it, and I went out that 
afternoon and drove around and arranged it, and my show went on that 
week, and Bob paid me for my time on the air, a cut of the underwriting, 
and also paid me for maintenance work at the station. When I brought my 
show to KNYO in 2012, Bob Young met me at the studio, showed me what to 
click on to get on the air, pointed at the microphone switch, and my 
show was on the schedule the next week. When I contacted Ed Nieves last 
year about getting my show on KMEC, there was a problem with other shows 
conflicting for the time, so he told me he'd talk to the others and move 
things around until it could work, and set Sid Cooperider on the 
technical case, and now my show is not only on KNY0 107.7fm in Fort 
Bragg 9pm-4am every Friday night, but I also have KMEC 105.1fm from 
midnight to 3am the same night. That was almost 15 years on KMFB, and 
it's almost four years for KNYO and a year for KMEC, respectively.


Just to let you know: that's how it goes at a real public radio station. 
That's how it can go for you.


KZYX doesn't need your money. KMEC and KNYO do; the only difference 
between them and KZYX is the difference in allowable transmitter power. 
When the poobahs at KZYX tell you that it's /fifty to seventy times/ as 
complicated and expensive to run their station compared to KNYO, that is 
just another part of their ongoing big fat lie.


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