[Kzyxtalk] A lesson for Labor Day.

[Marco McClean]

A LESSON FOR LABOR DAY

--Marco McClean

(I opened my Labor Day weekend Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show, 
on KNYO-LP in Fort Bragg CA, with this.)

"...and Paul Katzeff's Thanksgiving Coffee, in business fifty years now, 
and for good reason. Nineteen seventy-two to twenty-twenty-two, so far. 
You can learn about their products and stories, and adventures in 
foreign lands, by going to ThanksgivingCoffee.com.

Labor Day. It's all about honoring the people who crank the cranks and 
pedal the bellows and do the work that keeps the world turning, and 
especially the movement for organized labor so conscienceless rich 
muckymucks with all the money and power have a slightly harder time of 
screwing you out of /your/ time and energy and life without paying you 
what your work is worth.

"As always on May Day and Labor Day I'm reminded of an egregious local 
flower of hypocrisy:

"KZYX. You're government radio. You're given free control and use of a 
vast natural resource that belongs really to all of us: three 
frequencies in the FM broadcast band, one of them with permission to 
operate at thousands of watts to blanket the county, and the CPB pays 
you in the six figures, more than enough to cover operating expenses. So 
you're kept afloat by lots of tax money.

"And you don't pay any of it to the local people actually doing the work 
the radio station pretends to be there for in the first place... The 
local airpeople who prepare for their shows, and show up, and do their 
shows, all year long all put together are paid /nothing/. A handful of 
people in the office, primarily the manager/CEO of the corporation and 
the program director, keep all the money for themselves. Two thousand 
fifty-dollar-a-year memberships is a hundred-thousand dollars. The CEO 
and Program Director take /all/ of that one hundred grand and put it in 
their own personal bank accounts...

"...That is, if I'm right about the PD getting $40,000 a year. No-one 
will tell me exactly what she gets because that's one of many secrets.

"'Where can I see a list of how much money you're paying for the 
different canned shows you run,' I asked at more than one KZYX corporate 
board meeting. The answer always was, 'We can't tell you that.'

"'Can't or won't?' And then nothing. They have the information, so it's 
/won't/.

"And KZYX should reveal its dark money donors. Dark money in politics 
and law enforcement, and cults like KZYX, is where the only people who 
know where that money came from are the people who accepted the bribe. 
Do you have a definition of dark money that's better fits this? because 
I don't.

"One board meeting I went to, they went on record to thank an anonymous 
donor for $25,000. (That's enough money to pay /all/ expenses of KNYO 
for two whole years.

"But I'm talking about KZYX here: I said, 'Who gave you $25,000?' The 
board guy stared straight ahead, gritted his teeth, and said, 'An 
anonymous donor.' I said, 'Yes, but who was it?' He repeated, gritting 
harder, 'An anonymous donor.'

"That's dark money. And that’s only one instance of it. So when you run 
shows about the importance of labor and the struggles of labor, and how 
important it is for government and business agencies and corporations to 
be transparent, and then you operate in the manner that you've been 
doing for decade after decade, accepting tax money and secret 
controlling-interest-level donations, that's corruption, and you're 
being a pack of hypocrites. And the deejays who go along with this, 
without demanding to be paid for their work, even if it's only a 
pittance, are scabs. That's a labor term. So... a lesson for Labor Day.

"And it's not just KZYX. Thousands of NPR stations operate on that 
model. That's just the local one.

"All of that is /not/ to say that the airpeople aren't good at it and 
don't love it, but because it's so nice to be on the radio they're 
hurting workers everywhere. If the management's being paid, the workers 
should be paid. The way they do it, you can't do your show there unless 
you're a volunteer. And if you're a volunteer they don't have to pay 
you, so they don't. See how this works?

"Okay. Here are some items from various cornucopii of announcements, 
such as the Anderson Valley Advertiser, the Albion Grocery bulletin 
board, various post office windows, the County and Fort Bragg websites, 
and the MCN Announce listserv of just the last maybe couple of days..."

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