[Kzyxtalk] Shoestring.

[Marco McClean]

SHOESTRING.

Marco here. Re: Marty Durlin's letter titled Inside KZYX: "On a 
shoestring budget, KZYX operates..."

That shoestring budget includes paying Marty Durlin $60,000 a year plus 
full medical, dental, and vision. Just the money she sucks out of KZYX 
for herself in three months would fully fund every aspect of KNYO for a 
year, you know, speaking of shoelaces. Just two people in the management 
suite of KZYX, Marty and the next one in line, personally swallow every 
penny of all KZYX membership dues. 2000 members at $50 each is $100,000. 
Last time I checked, the station was burning through $600,000 a year, 
provided by a six-figure government grant and large, controlling 
donations from rich people whose class and stripe and financial 
interests you will consequently never hear a discouraging word about. 
And then there are underwriters.

About the underwriting. On the KZYX underwriting info page, three points 
are stressed to potential underwriters:

/1. Eighty percent of public radio listeners say they have a positive 
impression of a company that supports public radio. 2. Seventy percent 
of listeners say that underwriting messages have a positive impact on 
purchase decisions. 3. Eighty-six percent of listeners considered NPR 
personally important to them./

Underwriters are encouraged to buy time for their message on the air 
expecting a return in brand attraction and sales. How is that not 
advertising? And when programming decisions, like the decision to soak 
the broadcast day with NPR shows, are made with potential underwriting 
money in mind, how is that different from commercial radio, that 
similarly plays what pays.

The reason the low end of the FM dial was set aside for noncommercial 
radio was so radio could be done by people not concerned with whether it 
made money or not. Radio is only expensive to do when the folks who run 
the station like money. And who doesn't like money? So the expense of 
acquiring the plant and the license naturally ratchets to absurd 
heights, pricing everyone not mainly concerned with money entirely out 
of having a reasonably high-power radio station. So real noncommercial 
radio needs those specially allocated slots, and can do fine there, 
because doing radio is cheap. Transmitters last decades without 
maintenance; they're as reliable as a refrigerator. Once you've got the 
transmitter and you've got permission to plug it in and switch it on, 
your main expense of broadcasting is electricity. If the transmitter 
uses 4,000 watts, and electricity is 40c per kWh, which it is now, 
that's $1.60 an hour. That's two medium-size bites off the end of a 
burrito. A decent mixing board can be had used for just a few hundred 
dollars. Computers and microphones are practically free anymore. 
Internet access for phones and web is $100 a month, say $200 a month 
with all the bells and whistles. You get better equipment for more 
money, but you can't hear the difference.

The people who make KZYX's shows from distant places (for NPR and etc.) 
are often paid bogglingly well. Ira Glass, for example, just pre-Covid 
got divorced and sold his million-dollar apartment in New York. It's the 
local Mendocino County airpeople on KZYX who are not paid for their 
shows, though they're the ones who do all the actual work the radio 
station is there for in the first place, and also they have to 
periodically beg for money, "to keep the great shows on the air," as 
they used to put it, money that instead, see above, goes to a handful of 
people in the office. All of KZYX's transmitters and 
studio-to-transmitter links and all the studio lights and computers and 
microwave popcorn ovens comes to well less than $20,000 per year in 
electricity. So if the folks in the management suite, including the CEO, 
the bookkeeper, the microphone-cable mender guy, the underwriting 
salesperson, the program director and the newslady, are getting a total 
among them of, say, $200,000, and rent on the various places, and the 
tower fees, and replacement lightbulbs, and Henry's roof patch and a 
shingle every once in awhile, and so on, come to another $50,000 a year, 
that all adds up to less than $300,000. But it's $600,000, isn't it? 
Where's the extra $300,000 going? That's three million dollars every ten 
years. That's a mystery. Unless my math is way off, KZYX is /swimming/ 
in mystery money. And if it isn't, where did it vanish to?

The main item on the job desciption for a CEO for KZYX has always been: 
the candidate must be able and committed to raise money. Hence the 
periodic pep talk and poor-mouthing from the CEO. And yet the first job 
of the manager of any business, for-profit or nonprofit, bar or gas 
station or pet grooming salon or grammar school, is to see that the 
workers are paid before she pays herself. No manager at KZYX has ever 
done that, despite all the copious available money. I'd start with a 
$1000-a-year stipend for regular weekly airpeople, which is only $20 per 
show, but it would be a step. If the airperson is independently wealthy 
and $1000 for him is a bottle of fancy alcohol and a Japanese beefburger 
with gold flakes in the pickles, and he doesn't need it, he can tear up 
the check. People who need it can get a fresh set of tires and a year's 
worth of car insurance, or pay rent for January, or have a few teeth 
fixed right instead of having to keep gluing the caps back on in the 
bathroom mirror.

I was at KMFB for almost 15 years. That was a commercial station, that 
didn't get government grants to keep going, and had plenty of expenses a 
noncommercial station doesn't have, and was in a depressed radio market, 
and the string of owners always took their profit, and manager Bob 
Woelfel every once in awhile could not pay himself. Yet he paid us every 
time, both for our airtime and a cut of the advertising money our shows 
brought in. And he didn't dick around with our shows. Everyone at KMFB 
had more leeway and freedom than anyone at any NPR station I have ever 
heard of has ever had. That's my model for managerial integrity. Bob 
Young at KNYO, same thing. I don't mind not being paid at KNYO, because 
nobody is being paid. Bob manages the station so there'll be a station 
to do his show on. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, Marty Durlin could 
volunteer to manage KZYX, like the airpeople volunteer, but she doesn't 
have to if she doesn't want to, and I guess she doesn't want to, so.

With some of poor shoestring KZYX' mystery riches lately MCPB has bought 
prime real estate in downtown Ukiah with existing suitable buildings 
intact and ready to paint. When they move the office in, meaning some 
final paperwork, a dish antenna on a mast on the roof, a new 
studio-to-transmitter box, and a lazy afternoon plugging in the mixing 
board, phone and internet connections, a couple of microphones and a 
wingback chair, that'll be nice, but what will change on the air, where 
it counts? Will shows finally be allowed on KZYX that push the envelope 
out a little farther than chortling about sports or playing genre music 
and reading the liner notes in a genially stoned drawl or Terry Gross 
interviewing the granddaughter of the inventor of the windshield wiper, 
besides Ralph Nader at 5am Saturday morning?  Will anything change at 
all? I'm aware I'm harping on the pay issue, but if the local shows are 
valuable (I say even the most banal of them is) and radio work is worth 
being paid for, then pay the airpeople. If you value them, Marty, pay 
them. Not paying them is not valuing them; it's slapping them in the 
face. Of /course/ it's nice to be on the air and it feels good to have a 
show, and it's a rare opportunity in the world, and that softens the 
blow somewhat. That's no excuse. You can pay them, so pay them. If I 
were in your shoes, and if there was any hint of the station being 
embarrassed for funds, I'd take a substantial pay cut and pay them some 
more. I'd pay the token LGBT talk-show people a lot more. They clearly 
take the responsibility seriously. It's the best show you've got. That 
is a driveway show, called that because you get where you're going and 
sit in the car to hear the rest of it. Their work, and all the other 
local airpeople's work, brings in all that money that you pay yourself 
with. So pay them.

To compare, KNYO will be moving into another building soon, too, as its 
main studio and performance space of ten happy years of very fair rent, 
downtown in the city it serves, is being sold, which was expected, and 
no hard feelings. KNYO had some trouble this year; the tower-tree blew 
down in a storm, money was raised and that was dealt with, and there's 
money left over, saved, toward moving the tower and transmitter to a 
much better place early this coming year. All the problems, obligations, 
technical considerations, paperwork, and real expenses of KNYO are 
remarkably similar to KZYX's. And KNYO is constantly changing and 
adapting and continues to provide a platform for people to do radio from 
wherever they are, with cheap personal studios all over the county, 
including welcoming problematical people like me, and that's saying 
something. The difference comes from, I think, the level of money 
corruption. KZYX, $600,000 (one year it was $750,000!). KNYO, $15,000. 
/KNYO, at least forty times less corrupt./ That's a good slogan. I'll 
have to write that down.

Oh, also the difference is, KNYO's broadcast radius is limited by law to 
just a few miles. KZYX's signal can blanket the entire country 24 hours 
a day with a sometimes hourly pitch for ever more money, beyond the CPB 
grant that they get /because/ they can blanket the county. Does that 
seem fair to you?

Shoestring, tch.

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