[Kzyxtalk] kayzixx

[Marco McClean]

On 5/18/2017 7:32 PM, Mitch Clogg wrote:
>
> I feel your frustration with KZYX. Jim Heid doesn't. I don't remember 
> whatever I've heard about him, but I take it he has enjoyed success, 
> and I've felt his disapproval and dismissal of me. He appears to be a 
> very establishment guy, with zero tolerance for boat-rockers.
>


You might recall Jim Heid wrote a couple of years ago against my crazy 
idea of paying airpeople as though what they do has value. They'd have 
to declare it on their taxes, and all that rigamarole, and who would 
want to have to go to the trouble? And can you imagine trying to get 
deejays to clock in and out? And all for a piddly amount of money. Not 
worth it. A bookkeeping nightmare for everyone involved, he wrote.

At KMFB every month I turned in my hours written on a piece of paper. 
That was the extent of any bookkeeping nightmare. The bookkeeper used a 
computer program that kept track of everything and printed checks. KMFB 
paid me about $2,500 a year, it was one of several part-time paying gigs 
(Mendocino Microcomputers, Mendocino Theater Company...), and I got a W2 
form that added three minutes, if that, to doing my taxes. Granted, some 
of that money was for maintenance work, for example, being on call to 
drive for a temporary replacement transmitter or to fix a cooling fan in 
the transmitter shack or build a phone hybrid box or align the satellite 
dish or something, but most of it was regular hourly pay for my show and 
my 20-percent cut of the underwriting my show brought in.

Here's the experiment I suggested for KZYX: Give each of the airpeople a 
check for $1,000 for just last year's work, and then see how many of 
them go /pshaw, who needs this?/ and tear it up, and see how many of 
them cash it and spend the money on gas or food or one month's rent. 
That's how you find out how popular getting even a piddly $80 extra per 
month is.

Speaking of underwriting, they're paying a guy in the office at KZYX 
like $30,000 or $40,000 a year to "coordinate business underwriting". 
They try to keep it a secret exactly how much they pay themselves in the 
office there, but if he brings in enough /extra/ underwriting to even 
justify his own salary I'd be very surprised. Why not divide that money 
among the airpeople? It's their shows people are paying to hear, after all.


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