[Kzyxtalk] [MCN-Discussion]- Truth & Accuracy

[Marco McClean]

On 9/5/2016 2:04 PM, Yasmin Solomon wrote:
> Actually, what I remember, Marco was that you used some (or all) of the "7 Deadly Words" over the airwaves, and that is why they fired you. At least, this is what the hype was, at that time. I remember it well, as you were The First in a long line of fired Programmers. Actually, I was on the air for more than 9 years before Lose Wrongstreet and Margaret Thatcher/General Teresa Simon fired me. Remember?
>
> DJ Sister Yasmin


     That's one interpretation, Yasmin, but Mitch Clogg was really the 
first airperson banned by Sean Donovan. There was no "they" there to 
fire anyone, just one person acting as though he owned the frequency and 
the station, ruling by fiat. And then a short time later I brought Mitch 
to my show and barely even mentioned it in passing, talking about lots 
of things in between playing records. And Sean freaked out and that was 
it for me. Anyway, technically it's not considered firing, because the 
airpeople at KZYX have never /even/ had the rights of an employee. 
That's the way Sean locked it in, and that's the way it's stayed for 27 
years.


      And he used my having said the word /bullshit/ once weeks before 
that, at 2am, as an excuse, yes. (I'd brought Eduardo Smissen to KZYX, 
and Eduardo and I were talking and playing records, and I was struck by 
how ridiculous the manager-required thirty-second-long robotic station 
ID felt to recite, and said so.) Mary Aigner used the profanity excuse 
on many others. Lots of people swore late at night on KZYX down through 
the years of Queen Mary (I think that's what you called her, and it's 
apt), but whenever Mary got cheesed off with an airperson who wouldn't 
kowtow to her properly and so she wanted the person gone, that's the way 
she'd do it. While she was still program director I heard and saved some 
choice swearing on a Women's Voices show, just after 7pm of a Christmas 
holiday. I waited to see what would happen. No retribution, because the 
airperson held Mary's favor. I still hear comically gratuitous swearing 
in music at night on KZYX whenever I tune in. Generally around midnight.


     Swears are not a big deal. No radio station has ever had its 
license yanked by the FCC for swearing in art or in conversation. On the 
FCC web page you can read the real policy: the FCC has no interest in 
hearing complaints of profanity on the air during Safe Harbor hours 
(10pm - 6am local time), and it's been understood for a very long time 
that no station is required to have iron control over a caller's swear 
slipping through here or there at any time of the day or night. KZYX's 
7-second delay machine just serves to disconcert callers and put them at 
a disadvantage, gives devious schmucks like Stuart Campbell added 
ability to scramble a caller's point, and adds one more machine and 
several more contact points in the signal chain that can go wrong and 
screw things up.


     To compare, KNYO (107.7fm in or near Fort Bragg, http://knyo.org) 
uses a phone interface I made out of a thrift-store telephone. It works 
fine. The radio audience can hear callers as clearly as they hear the 
person at the mic. I don't recall the exact figure, but I think it cost 
me two dollars for the phone, fifty cents for a couple of tiny 
transformers, and it took about half an hour to solder things together 
and test and install it at the station. When I do my show by live remote 
from Juanita's apartment I use a cheap speakerphone to put callers on 
the air. No delay beyond the unavoidable web delay of getting the audio 
stream to the transmitter. It sounds okay. And when the material 
warrants it I swear like a muleteer. I'm a writer. I tell what I know, 
and tell how I know it, and say what I think, and express how I feel, 
and give everyone else the same opportunity. Because this is the United 
States of America, not Communist China.


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