[Kzyxtalk] Letter to new general manager at KZYX.

[Marco McClean]

Letter to new general manager at KZYX. (Reading time: 5 min.)


To: GM at kzyx.org


Hello, shiny new manager, fifth one in two years, but who's counting?


I'm Marco McClean. I've applied over and over. I've patiently jumped 
through all the hoops again and again. I've been ignored by the 
hierarchy there, and when I finally complained about being ignored I was 
treated like a bug. I have the skills, the dedication, the following and 
audience from print publications and on other radio stations, and from 
my teevee show and the grownups that I taught when they were little at 
the Mendocino Community School and the Albion Whale School in the 1980s, 
the theater companies I've worked for, etc.... And, from any objective 
point of view, the people who run KZYX have no right to stand between me 
and my medium. I deserve to use the three frequencies MCPB squats on, 
just as much as if not more than anyone there deserves it. I am exactly 
the sort of person KZYX should have been actively recruiting all along, 
rather than being maliciously turfed out 27 years ago and even more 
maliciously shut out ever since, where genially-stoned-sounding 
sycophantic slackers who mumble the station ID and press a button to 
play a random-sounding playlist get ushered in past me and stay for 
fricking ever.


I have built whole radio stations from parts. I have worked in 
commercial and noncommercial radio. I have a long record of local media 
accomplishments (including twenty years of my current show, Memo of the 
Air: Good Night Radio, where I have never missed an airdate). And I'm 
writing today mostly because I want a grievance addressed and made 
right; I've been blackballed from KZYX from just after its inception in 
1989 to the present day. Will you look into that, please? And kick 
whoever you have to kick in the ass, to get my show scheduled on KZYX at 
long last? Because I have been waiting, lately, literally for FIVE YEARS 
for action on this. If I had planted a tree every day for those five 
years, that would be about as many trees as KZYX has paying members. 
But, instead of planting trees, in addition to juggling several 
part-time jobs I have put twenty-plus hours of concentrated prep every 
week into each one of my weekly six-to-eight-hour shows, where I read on 
the air local writing and stories and articles from the web and from 
books and magazines, and I play old music and old-time radio drama and 
ephemeral films from my collection and new music that catches my ear. 
It's science and poetry and music and art and politics and health and 
public announcements and a swap shop and more, and it's more diverse and 
information-intensive and educational than any show anywhere. Compare it 
to a cross between BBC Radio 4, Travis T. Hipp, Jurgen Gothe, Jean 
Shepherd, and Firesign Theater.


Get on it. And get back to me with your progress. You should find a 
/stack/ of applications and resumes and material from me there, as well 
as material in my favor from others I've worked for and helped. And if 
you don't find it, that's part of what I need you to get to the bottom 
of. I'm copying this to the kzyx-talk listserv to make sure you see it 
(I hope you're subscribed to that), because a few months ago I was told 
by the chirpy new program director that everything I sent previous 
program directors had been going directly into the trash without being 
read. Also you should know -probably nobody there will tell you- that 
Stuart Campbell was filtering what got to the board and dealing with the 
board's email account as his own playground since he was board president 
and that continued when he was named manager, and he probably still has 
the keys to the entire system; he shouldn't- you need to change all the 
passwords; put it on your list of things to do. And I asked the program 
director for the names of members of the committee that decides who's on 
the air and who's not, because I'd heard it was chaired by Stuart 
Campbell (!), and that information was not made available. On the 
website the programming committee members are listed as Jane Futcher, 
Mary Aigner and Tim Bray. Jane Futcher isn't even on the board anymore, 
so. And if it's right about Mary and Tim- the idea of Mary Aigner and 
Tim Bray standing in judgment over me, or anyone, is an outrage. Who is 
really on that committee, and how often and when do they meet, and 
where, so I can invite people to show up and watch?


Speaking of the KZYX website, read it sometime. Important information is 
effectively hidden, and where it's not hidden it's out of date or 
obfuscated. And there's no contact info for the individual boardmembers 
nor for you, and there's no web forum so listeners and airpeople and 
boardmembers and staff can communicate on issues where everyone can see 
the same durable information. Fixing that and setting that up would be 
the work of fifteen minutes for your webmaster. If you have no 
webmaster, spend an hour taking a tutorial and learn to do it yourself. 
Just get the keys away from whoever lies to you that it's too hard. Meg 
Courtney nixed the idea of real, open communication by saying, "No! That 
would be a free for all."


Also just a half-dozen people in the office, including you, are together 
being paid a quarter of a million dollars a year while none of the local 
airpeople are paid at all, not even the ones who work hard at it, and 
that's clearly an injustice. And it's hard to enjoy what there is to 
enjoy about supposedly noncommercial KZYX when listeners are constantly 
bombarded with requests for money, and with advertisements for 
fundraising events that claim "all proceeds go to KZYX" when that is 
always a big fat lie. All proceeds in fact go to the bank accounts of 
the handful of people in the office. The annual tax-derived $120,000 to 
$190,000 CPB grant easily pays to keep and operate the station. You'll 
find that out when you look at the books. (In contrast KNYO's entire 
budget, including main studio, performance space, electricity, fees and 
paperwork, phone, internet, everything, comes to $10,000 to $12,000 a 
year, and Bob Young by himself manages everything you and all the people 
in your office are responsible for, but in a lazy afternoon per month, 
and he isn't paid. He does it because he loves radio. Talk to him; maybe 
come up with a few improvements and simplify the way things are done at 
KZYX. I'm sure you'll find a way to free up enough money to get the 
worthy airpeople properly paid.


These are only a few of the things you can easily and quickly deal with 
in your position. And you should do them now because, you know, if not 
now, when?


You'll find airchecks of hundreds of my radio shows from KMFB and then 
KNYO and KMEC at my weblog, so you can hear what my show sounds like. 
Pick something there and skim it.


Really, on KKUP in 1985 I had my radio kids at the Whale School on the 
air live through the phone for weekly radio drama shows three days after 
I contacted the station. At KMFB my show was on the air within a week of 
my contacting manager Bob Woelfel, and the underwriting I brought in 
paid for my airtime from the first day and throughout the almost fifteen 
years I was there. My show has always paid for itself. At KNYO, same 
story. At KMEC it took a little longer because Ed Nieves had to make a 
few telephone calls, edit the schedule page and move some shows around 
to make room, but they were courteous, enthusiastic, fast and real. Over 
the years people I encouraged got shows on all the radio stations I ever 
had anything to do with. In my newspapers in the 1980s and 1990s I gave 
a regular column to everyone who sent in their story on time, whether 
they were on their meds or off. My public access teevee show welcomed 
everyone who walked in the door and signed up on show nights, no matter 
what they smelled like or wanted to do with the camera. Every time I do 
my current show (KNYO/KMEC) in Fort Bragg the door is open and people 
can come in off the street and sit down at a microphone. I show up 
early, fully prepared, I do my superlative show, I fix anything that's 
broken that I know how to fix, I tidy up the studio behind me, normalize 
the board, and I leave. I solve problems and provide equipment for the 
station. I bring in underwriters. I am deserving of airtime.


/Every/ radio station, commercial or noncommercial, that I have ever 
been part of has been more free and open and honest and transparent and 
welcoming of constructive dissent in its operation and decision-making 
process and finances than KZYX has.


Think of expediting scheduling my show on KZYX as an opportunity for you 
to address an unconscionably delayed repair ticket. I know you just got 
there, but everyone before you just got there once, too, and they, like 
you, accepted a princely salary equal to 1,200 yearly $50 memberships, 
but they faked their way through the job, accomplished nothing and fled. 
Be different. Be better than them. I know you can do it.


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