[Kzyxtalk] KZYX begging for money again, and for what? Further: A Nancy Drew Mystery.

[John Sakowicz]

I've said it once, and I'll say it again: KZYX is a jobs program for a few "unemployables" who couldn't get a job anyplace else. 

And KZYX is also a private clubhouse for a few self-important programmers with mostly old, stale shows. They're kept on the air, because they unconditionally support the few unemployables. 

Those two groups -- the unemployables and the old hacks -- have a mutual aid pact. They keep each other embedded at KZYX.

Meanwhile, the public doesn't get the radio it deserves.

---


> On June 1, 2020 at 4:05 PM Marco McClean <memo at mcn.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Subject: KZYX begging for money again, and for what?
> 
> (Addressed to BOD at kzyx.org)
> 
> To John Azzaro, who wrote to me this week to tell me to take him off my 
> email list, which he's not and has never been on:
> 
> Okay, John, I see what's happening. I've been emailing the program 
> director (pd at kzyx.org), the general manager (gm at kzyx.org), and the board 
> of directors of KZYX (bod at kzyx.org), a single email to all three 
> addresses, once a week, sometimes twice to correct a mistake, for years, 
> since almost as far back as when KMFB was bought up and destroyed and I 
> applied to move my long-running, time proven, excellent show to KZYX in 
> February of 2012 and have been waiting ever since for a substantial 
> response. I applied again a few times, and /nothing/. I applied to 
> manage the station at one point, and was not even considered. Lately 
> I've been sending to KZYX notices of my weekly show (on air since 1997 
> all night every Friday night (almost 15 years on KMFB, now on KNYO-LP 
> Fort Bragg and KMEC-LP Ukiah) as samples, so yez can see what you're 
> missing. Apparently you are getting email sent to the board of directors 
> of KZYX because you are on the board of directors of KZYX. That explains it.
> 
> In that case, it's weird you didn't know: your corporation's budget is 
> insanely bloated, mostly with paying nearly $300,000 a year to a handful 
> of people in management and tech support while somehow not paying the 
> local airpeople anything at all for showing up and doing all their shows 
> all year long, all put together. You're paying just the general manager 
> at KZYX $60,000 a year. A similar amount entirely supports a real 
> community radio station like KNYO for /six years/, including rent on the 
> downtown storefront performance space in the community it serves, where 
> in normal times people can often just walk in off the street and up to a 
> microphone --it happens on my show at all hours of the night-- and there 
> are community events right in the radio station --bands, live radio 
> drama, etc. In normal times, that is, whatever that means anymore.
> 
> Just in terms of money: the six-figure Corporation for Public 
> Broadcasting grant MCPB (Mendocino County Public Broadcasting) corp. 
> gets could easily support KZYX by itself without the need for several 
> pledge drives every year. Most of your broadcasting clock that isn't 
> devoted to automation playing recorded crap from a thousand miles away 
> is given to a pack of genially-stoned-sounding slackers who I.D. the 
> station at the top of the hour and chuckle or drone through a slight 
> reshuffle of their record collection-- that part's nearly free to you, 
> as are all the NPR shows, thanks to the CPB grant.*
> 
> Even so, airpeople show up, they do the radio work that brings in the 
> money the people in the office use to pay themselves with, and airpeople 
> deserve to be paid. As long as you're paying management, you should pay 
> the airpeople who do a two or three hour show per week a stipend of, 
> say, $1,000 a year each. That's less than minimum wage and leaves out 
> paying for prep work. It would be as simple as a phone call and a few 
> emails back and forth with your bookkeeper, who would distribute a 
> one-page tax form to fill out, like the way it's done at plenty of other 
> nonprofit organizations, theater companies, for example, who have no 
> trouble paying workers for their work. Sixty deejays at $1,000 a year 
> each would be $60,000. How is it that you consider one manager to be 
> worth that much money, and all the real workers put together to be worth 
> /nothing at all/? John, how can you not see what's wrong with that? The 
> first job of the manager of any business, for-profit or nonprofit, is to 
> pay the workers before he pays himself. And the manager of KZYX has a 
> program director to direct the programs (such as they need to be 
> directed), an operations manager to manage the operations, a business 
> underwriting coordinator to coordinate the business underwriting, a 
> bookkeeper to keep the books (see above) and if anything complicated 
> breaks, a real radio engineer is a phone call away. What's left for the 
> manager to do besides scribble up a glowing financial report for the 
> board once or twice a year and attend the occasional broadcasting 
> conference once or twice a year to hobnob with similar managers of 
> similar radio fiefdoms?
> 
> KZYX' high-power license for 92.7Mhz is a free government grant of 
> control of a natural resource. And you've been using it for more than 
> thirty years mainly as a bullhorn to beg for money to pay a tiny group 
> of people in the office. And the sort of people in the office who you 
> hire keep people who will lick your hand licking your hand and keep 
> dedicated radio people like me and shows like mine out, and have done 
> since the beginning. That's my personal concern in this.
> 
> $600,000 a year to MCPB corp., much of it tax-derived, far outweighs 
> what the public gets from you in return. For that much money 
> --approaching $20,000,000 (!) now, in 2020-corrected dollars, KZYX 
> should be the Cadillac of community radio stations, a shining 
> gold-plated beacon of wonder and delight, and not a mediocre, 
> run-of-the-mill NPR outlet.
> 
> *It costs MCPB corp. less than a dollar an hour for electricity to keep 
> all KZYX&Z's transmitters and electronics and computers and lights in 
> all your studios on and pumping at the same time, whether someone's at 
> the microphone or not, whether airpeople put in some effort to prepare a 
> real show or not. That amounts to less than $10,000 a year. And all the 
> music fees and streaming fees and tower fees and repairs and rent and 
> every other expense of KZYX should bring the crux of your biscuit to 
> $80,000 a year, $100,000 tops. Everything after that, that isn't paid to 
> the real workers, which it mostly isn't, is vanishing to no effect 
> either because of incompetence or crooks, or both, and likely also up 
> someone's nose.
> 
> KZYX under MCPB corp. has never been open to freedom and creativity and 
> change. Three minutes of some chemtrails or antivax-conspiracy lunatic 
> calling in once a week for comic relief, or three minutes allotted time 
> for someone to bravely but shakily speak a discouraging word to a cold 
> boardroom once a year does not satisfy the requirement for power to 
> engage with the public who are the real owners of the frequencies you 
> squat on. Learn something, at last, and do something right for a change, 
> John. And if you personally don't want critical communication from the 
> public about the so-called public radio station you have so much control 
> over, that's on you. I guess I'll continue to write the occasional email 
> to the board, despite continuing to be ignored except to be told, as 
> you've just told me, that the board doesn't want to hear what the board 
> doesn't want to hear.
> 
> --Marco McClean, memo at mcn.org
> 
> (Further, I later had to write again to the the board of directors:)
> 
> To board of directors of KZYX:
> 
> John Azzaro just sent the following reply to me, meaning he immediately 
> got what I sent only to the KZYX board of directors at the board of 
> directors' email address, bod at kzyx.org
> 
> John wrote, and I quote: "I am not on the KZYX BOD, or connected to the 
> station in any way, nor are station sent e-mails directed to me from 
> anyone but you. Again I respectfully request you remove my name from 
> your list(s)."
> 
> Now, I just triple-checked: bod at kzyx.org is the only place I'm sending 
> this (except maybe later to the AVA) and John Azzaro is listed as a 
> boardmember and committee member of KZYX on these pages of KZYX.org:
> 
> https://www.kzyx.org/board-meetings
> "Current Board Members: ...John Azzaro)"
> 
> and https://www.kzyx.org/mcpb-board-committees
> "Personnel Committee: ...John Azzaro)"
> 
> If those pages are in error and John is not a boardmember, then maybe 
> you should remove him from being listed in your system to have email 
> addressed to the board (like this one and my previous ones, for example) 
> passed along automatically to him, whether it goes for everyone or just 
> applies to what I write to you.
> 
> In short, I'm sending email to bod at kzyx.org, and he's getting it, marked 
> as from me, and he's claiming neither to be on the board nor to have 
> anything at all to do with the station! It's possible that someone with 
> the keys to your system and web page, or who is also on the board's 
> email forwarding list, is playing a prank. It's not my doing. Look into 
> it, because he'll probably get this too, and whatever else I send to you.
> 
> I'm complying fully with John's repeated requests not to email him. To 
> my knowledge, and given his denial of any connection to KZYX, I never 
> have. (Except for replying once privately to his email to me, of course, 
> to tell him so.)
> 
> --
> Marco McClean, memo at mcn.org,
> https://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
> 
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