[Kzyxtalk] Sports Phone.

[Marco McClean]

On 1/12/2022 8:40 AM, Jim Young wrote:
 > Was that a compliment or a dig at the Sports Phone?
 > JIm Young


Marco here. Jim, you're doing radio work that brings in money that the 
handful of people in the office are paying themselves very well with. 
You should be paid. A manager's first job is to pay the workers before 
she pays herself. Whenever the top brass of an organization is making 
out like bandits while paying the workers very little, and this comes 
out in the news, there's a huge outcry. Why is there no outcry here when 
workers are paid nothing at all? Especially when Mendocino County Public 
Broadcasting Corporation is swimming in money and always has been. KZYX 
goes through /fifty times/ the money KNYO does. Same basic operation 
with all the elements. And so-called nonprofit MCPB is right now buying 
a third of an acre of commercial downtown Ukiah and office buildings 
with just the extra money from /one year/, which they had extra every 
year before. They should have been paying the local airpeople all along, 
rather than pissing (and squirreling) all that money away and making the 
airpeople give up their airtime to beg for even more money for the 
people in the office.

Just something to think about: NPR's Ira Glass and the producers of his 
one-hour-per-week radio show get hundreds of thousands of dollars a 
year. That's how much he's worth to NPR. You're worth rather less than 
that to KZYX but you're worth /something/ beyond a pat on the head and a 
"good job, son, carry on". People who work for nothing when the managers 
are being paid are hurting workers everywhere. If you need the money, 
you need the money. If you're independently wealthy and don't even need 
money, you either tear up the check or donate it to a cause. If you work 
in a restaurant, you always take your legal break, no matter how busy it 
is. You never work overtime without being paid overtime. If you're a 
teacher in a school, no matter how much you like teaching and no matter 
how fun it is, you don't work for nothing while the superintendent of 
schools gets $225,000 a year. This is like that.

I put about as much time and energy into getting ready all week for my 
8-hour radio show as a normal person puts into a full-time job, and in 
between I've always had several part-time jobs to live. I've been doing 
this sort of thing all my adult life. It was great when I had KMFB for 
like 15 years, because I got paid to do radio there, and engineer, and 
build things for the station. I don't mind working for KNYO for nothing 
because the manager's taking nothing (to do essentially the same job 
KZYX manager is doing for $5,000 a month and medical and dental).

I've heard your sports show, your subject is totally safe for the bosses 
at the station, and it naturally draws callers, and that's good for the 
bosses' money flow. You're safe. Yez all sound like you're having a nice 
time, but there's no edge they have to worry about. They can't kick you 
off the air when you man up and expect out loud to be paid. And that 
will get a foot in the door for them to have to start paying the others. 
That's what I meant.

No matter how much or little prep you need to do, and no matter how 
frivolous or profound your subject is, you show up for work on time, 
every time, and do your show, don't you? Get yourself paid. It's an 
important point.

Twenty dollars a show is a month's rent per year. Or a full set of 
tires, two oil changes, replacement windshield wipers and car 
registration, all of that. Or comprehensive insurance on you vehicle. 
It's not much, but it's a lot. And that's the minimum /I'll/ require 
when my show is on KZYX, which could happen with the flip of a switch 
any Friday and should if the world were fair and the management of KZYX 
weren't corrupt as all hell.


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