[Kzyxtalk] Ongoing KZYX management fraud.

[John Sakowicz]

Nice work, Marco.

-- John


> On January 29, 2018 at 1:56 PM Norman de Vall <ndevall at mcn.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Marco,
> Good piece of work.  Please invite readers on the Announce
> list to join the  kzyxtalk list.
> Voter registration should be the same as state law.
> Norman
> 
> 
> > On Jan 29, 2018, at 1:50 PM, Marco McClean <memo at mcn.org> wrote:
> > 
> > Here's what I sent to the AVA last night. A reply to the discussion 
> > about Bruce Anderson's bid for a seat on the board of Mendocino County 
> > Public Broadcasting Corporation:
> > 
> > --
> > 
> >  11 Responses to Mendocino County Today: Monday, Jan. 29, 2018
> > 
> >     January 29, 2018 at 3:36 am
> > 
> >     Re: Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Corporation board elections.
> > 
> >     Bruce, make sure to pass along to people considering paying for a 
> > membership in order to be eligible to vote, that the deadline for that 
> > was December 31, 2017. Paying for a membership now means you can vote in 
> > 2019, not this year, not this coming board election in March. See what 
> > they did there? For your $50 you will get a laser-printed form letter 
> > welcoming you to the station’s family, whatever that means, and someone 
> > might even have deigned to scribble his name on it with a pen, but you 
> > will not get a ballot, because you were not a member by New Year’s Day.
> > 
> >     Also, all the membership money paid by ALL the members all year 
> > long adds up to less than half the amount the CEO of the corporation 
> > pays himself and his gang lieutenants in the office. That’s a fact. 2000 
> > members at $50 each is $100,000. Just the manager alone sucks $60,000 
> > out of the station for himself. And that’s the guy who lies to the 
> > airpeople that there’s no money to pay them for actually doing what the 
> > station’s there for in the first place. The money is to make sure /he/ 
> > gets paid. Essentially, he takes $5,000 every month in return for 
> > instructing others to raise money to pay him to make the executive 
> > decision to never pay the real workers. That’s a neat trick.
> > 
> >     Other public radio stations get along fine without funding an 
> > expensive hood ornament to sit on his thumb in the leather chair. KMUD 
> > has no paid CEO. KNYO’s entire budget –rent, fees, phones, internet, 
> > equipment, repairs, electricity, everything– would easily be covered for 
> > /five years/ with the $60,000 Jeffrey Parker snatched for himself out of 
> > the KZYX cookie jar in just the year he’s been there.
> > 
> >     And even if they were run with clockwork precision and certified by 
> > the Pope of Rome himself, elections at MCPB Corp can’t help but be 
> > bogus. They’re the ultimate in gerrymandering. Leaving it up only to 
> > people who have paid –and that includes big-money donors who’ve paid /a 
> > lot/– means that the only people allowed to vote are people who /like 
> > things exactly the way they are and don’t want any change/. They like 
> > their favorite shows on at the times they expect it; that’s what they’re 
> > paying for. If a few members want something different, something better, 
> > the only lever or button or control they can touch is to vote for a 
> > vocal-opposition-minority boardmember who, even if the miracle were to 
> > occur and he got elected, would be treated like shit by the entrenched 
> > boardmembers, locked out of any decisionmaking process, kept from 
> > examining the station’s books, and rendered impotent to improve 
> > anything. That has happened to maybe a dozen people over the years. 
> > That’s how they do it. That’s what you’re in for, Bruce.
> > 
> >     All decisions about who’s on the air and who’s not are made 
> > primarily to not disturb the fountain of money. Which is the reverse of 
> > the way noncommercial radio is supposed to be. The low end of the FM 
> > band was set aside by the FCC for radio projects to do what the money 
> > considerations of commercial radio make difficult, to do wild and crazy 
> > things, to experiment, to educate, to explore, because with /commercial/ 
> > radio the capitalist owners need to be paid, and it’s the law that they 
> > pay the airpeople. The license that goes with a radio station is a 
> > monopoly on the station’s frequency; even in today’s advertising climate 
> > it is a license to coin money, and that’s what makes buying a radio 
> > station so pricey, it isn’t because it’s expensive or hard.
> > 
> >     Actually doing radio, keeping a station going, is incredibly cheap 
> > and easy. All the major expenses for every radio station in America were 
> > taken care of, were fully paid off, by the first day the station was 
> > ever on the air, and fun noncommercial projects would be squeezed 
> > entirely out of the radio band without noncommercial band protection.
> > 
> >     But the people who run KZYX have from the beginning been throwing 
> > up an impenetrable fog of lies and obfuscation and fake make-work about 
> > everything to keep it artificially expensive, to keep hard control over 
> > what goes out on the air, /by/ keeping people in charge who like money 
> > rather than people who love radio and want more people involved in the 
> > making and doing of radio.
> > 
> >     Here’s how you tell. Ask them. Ask Jeffrey Parker how long he’d 
> > stay at the station in his capacity as manager if they told him tomorrow 
> > that if he were to stay they weren’t going to pay him anymore, and that 
> > he had to give back the $60,000 he’d already taken home and spent. “What 
> > the hell are you talking about?” he’d say. “That’s crazy talk.” I’ll 
> > tell you what he will /not/ say. He will not say, “Okay, that’s fine, 
> > pay the real workers with it –pay the airpeople. That’s fine with me. 
> > What do /I/ need with money. I am in it for the love of radio.”
> > 
> >     But those of us who’ve been doing radio for decades and continue to 
> > do it, and who work harder and longer at it than anyone in the office at 
> > KZYX, ever, and who aren’t currently being paid for it, are still doing 
> > it after all these years, because we are in it primarily for /radio/ and 
> > not in it for the money.
> > 
> >     And if you come across an unpaid airperson who says, “Oh, I’m happy 
> > to it for nothing, because I love the station so much, and I just love 
> > to be on the air, and we’re doing such important, vital, 
> > consciousness-raising work here (and so on),” ask him this: /Would you 
> > stop doing it if they suddenly began to pay you what you’re worth? If 
> > they gave you now, say, $1000 for what you did last year, would you quit 
> > in insulted disgust? Or would you say thank you, thank you, and take the 
> > money and pay your car insurance and a month’s rent with it, and come 
> > back next week and do your show again?/
> > 
> >     When my show gets on KZYX –and I repeat: I’ve been waiting for it 
> > to be scheduled there since I applied in early 2012– I expect to be 
> > paid. You know me, Bruce, you know my work in public television, in 
> > publishing, on KMFB (for which I was paid) and now KNYO and KMEC; you 
> > know I’m worth it.
> > 
> >     Something to keep in mind: just Ira Glass and his two producers get 
> > $500,000 a year for their one-hour-per-week show, and they take three 
> > full months off every year, and MCPB pays into that, so I know they 
> > recognize that radio work is work deserving of pay. They should pay 
> > local radio workers too, if they’re going to even pay lip service to the 
> > idea that they’re running a community radio station, and not just a tiny 
> > run-of-the-mill mediocre NPR satellite station out in the middle of 
> > fricking nowhere, which somehow, on paper, they raise more than $600,000 
> > a year to keep the doors open on, when you can get a pack of three 
> > rubber doorstops at the dollar store and if one doesn’t work you can 
> > stick another one in there. I mean, if it’s really true that they go 
> > through that much money they can well afford to pay the airpeople. All 
> > of them, even the ones who show up with nothing and slack off and 
> > sleepwalk through their airtime. Even they are doing the work of radio, 
> > and KZYX management is not.
> > 
> >     Marco McClean
> >     memo at mcn.org
> >     http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
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