[Kzyxtalk] KZYX unfair to workers! (was) KZYX Board Election

[Marco McClean]

KZYX unfair to workers! (was) KZYX Board Election


On 3/9/2017 3:26 PM, david alden wrote:
 > Can't think of a single reason why sitting on the board, as president 
or otherwise, somehow constrains one's first amendment rights.


     The main thing to remember is that KZYX is unfair to workers. As 
long as the local airpeople are not being paid, the management should 
not be paid. Other radio station managers understand this. In commercial 
radio it's against the law to not pay airpeople. In noncommercial, 
educational band radio, office tasks are so simple that, for example, 
over at KNYO, and at KMEC, the managers accomplish them all --all the 
office jobs-- in a lazy afternoon per month. When Bob Woelfel was 
managing KMFB, if for some reason there wasn't enough money on payday, 
he always paid the airpeople before he paid himself.


     Anyone who tells you that there's no money to pay the airpeople is 
turning a blind eye to the fact that MCPB pays a tiny handful of people 
in the office a quarter of a million dollars a year, and so is nearly 
constantly in dire straits for money and requires airpeople, who I 
repeat are not being paid, to beg, on the air, for the money to pay 
management, and to play and read what amount to advertisements for 
fundraising events to pay management, and in return the management shows 
up at board meetings to congratulate everyone on a job well done. Well 
done, little people. You have done well. Now we're going back inside to 
eat steak and manage foreign affairs and do complicated managey stuff, 
and thank you /so much/ for all your hard work shoveling out the royal 
stables and digging potatoes in the fields. I don't know if you've ever 
seen the movie /The Boxtrolls/, but the political of the city in that 
film is very similar to the way KZYX is run.


     Just the general manager is paid $60,000 a year. That's the 
equivalent of 1200 yearly $50 memberships. That over half of the total 
membership. /All/ the money members pay, and even more, goes straight 
into the personal bank accounts of the people in the office, who, except 
for maybe the repair guy, are entirely superfluous to radio. If everyone 
in the office just stayed home for couple of weeks, nobody listening to 
KZYX would notice they were gone. The automation would still switch in 
and out of NPR and other distant shows, and would play recorded promos 
and station IDs, the way it does all night every night when no-one's 
there. The airpeople would still show up and do their shows. The radio 
station exists as a platform for radio people to do radio. And it's so 
cheap to keep a radio station on the air. Honestly: once you have the 
equipment in place and permission to switch it on, it's practically 
free. A 4,000 watt FM transmitter costs 60 cents an hour to run. It 
doesn't matter how many people use it, it costs the same. That and a 
studio-to-transmitter link and a couple of 30-watt translator stations 
and a few mixing boards and some room lights and phone lines and 
internet and tower fees and music publisher fees, and rent on studio 
space; all together, if you thought of all that as a person, costs just 
a little more than paying that single rock-reliable untiring person the 
minimum wage 24/7.


     And MCPB, the corporation that was granted, for free, the priceless 
right to operate on three frequencies in Mendocino County, somehow 
pissed away almost $600,000 just last year alone, while they begged and 
begged for ever more money. They are that stupid, and that bad at 
managing a radio station.


     So when Meg Courtney, chairman of these fools, vilifies a specific 
candidate for the board she sits on and recommends against him, anyone 
with a brain in his head should blow a bronx cheer in her direction. If 
/anybody/ is bad for KZYX, it is she. Oh, and also Stuart Campbell, the 
Grima Wormtongue in the works.


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