[Kzyxtalk] Response to KZYK Board of Directors Public meeting

[Marco McClean]

Liz Helenchild wrote:
 >Beth,
 >While I join you & many other KZYX listeners/members/supporters in 
feeling shock, anger, & sadness re the abrupt firing of Alicia Bales 
(the name she now uses), also in exasperation with the lack of 
transparency re personnel/personal decisions, I think your assumption of 
collusion is unreasonable. Can you, a seasoned journalist, share any 
inside information? The problem is structural, I think. We need serious 
inquiry into changing the game toward more open communication between 
KZYX deciders & the public. Though distressed & mystified that a GM on 
her way out would make such a radical change, I object to name-calling. 
On every level of public discourse, we see that divisiveness does not 
further, only creates more heat than light. --Respectfully, (signed) Liz

Marco here. Beth can't share information she can't get, and she can't 
get it because, as you're right in implying, Mendocino County so-called 
Public Broadcasting Corporation is opaque. Two pages of faked-up lists 
of numbers once a year is not financial disclosure. Twenty minutes of 
kindergarten-teacher-moderated open lines every three or four months is 
not open engagement, nor is an answering machine for suggestions to the 
manager, nor is an email address for the secretary of the board any 
substitute for two-way communication with decisionmakers, nor is 
/private/ communication with anyone with any power any good at all. 
Three minutes of tinny, staticky expostulation on a Zoom board meeting 
is not a freewheeling conversation on the air with anyone interested in 
sharing secrets with the public.

Either it's a public organization or it's a private one. If it's 
private, why keep pretending it's not. Advertisements are advertisements 
even if you call them underwriting. Last time I looked, the KZYX website 
is still suggesting that underwriting shows /gets your business' name 
and message out there/. They're not going to put anything on the air 
that pisses off the money. They're only going to allow things on the air 
that they're sure can never piss off the money. How is that different 
from commercial radio, where they're at least honest about it. You pay 
them to say nice things about you and never confuse you as to nuance, 
and they say nice things about you and that's that. Same thing. Radio 
can be much more than that, and should.

And if it's public let's see the books. Every electronic and paper page 
of them. For a third of a century Mendocino County Public Broadcasting 
has been vanishing two or three times the money it really costs to 
maintain the place. That amounts to /at least/ ten or twelve million 
dollars by now that nobody has any idea where it went except the people 
who squirreled it away and retired early on it. It might be in failed 
weed farms or the stock market, or bitcoin anymore. It might be 
anywhere. Probably a lot of it is in a couple of wine cellars in the 
form of spoiled grape juice.

This latest firing kerfuffle is just like all the other kerfuffles in 
the past. There was the manager/newsguy who had a nervous breakdown, the 
comic-noir screaming office three-way romance blowup, the child 
molestation in the deejay-chair scandal, the new-age cult promotion, the 
manager who billed the corporation for her collection of old records she 
didn't wanta take with her when she moved, the weed-talk censorship 
purges, Gordon Black blocking the door against the Bari hordes, the way 
managers sit on the bubbling situation as long as they can stand it and 
then flee like the wind every six months or a year or two and the 
machine sticks in another one just like the other one. How long has the 
latest manager lasted, two years? three years? That might be a record 
for the place. And people who have their hobby show that they like to do 
or like to listen to, who have things the way they want them, go, /shut 
up about that; be nice! This is our community station, not the offensive 
pissers' and moaners', just shut up!/ and people who want to add 
features or put something experimental and alive on the air, something 
that might be a little edgy, something that might let some light into 
the dark cobwebby corners, get walled out and shut out until they get 
tired and go away. And nothing ever changes. A handful of people in the 
office keep sucking hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the station 
for themselves every year; another couple of hundred thousand dollars 
vanish in a puff of smoke every year; the really quite small expenses of 
radio are covered by government grants and the largesse of rich 
self-greenwashing corporations and families. And the airpeople, the ones 
doing what the station is there to do in the first place, or at least 
going through the motions of it, are paid nothing for all their 
essential work, the real work, doing radio, which has always been an 
afterthought, if that, to MCPB Corp. And so KZYX goes on being just so 
much harmless dumb genially-stoned-sounding happy bullshit for old 
trust-fund babies, sucking up all the local public radio money, lying to 
paying members that they have any voice at all in decisions, squatting 
on three frequencies, blanketing the county, breathing up all the air in 
the room, a perfect example of the message and last page of /Animal Farm/.

Liz, the story is that Alicia got a bum deal. But look at her history. 
Did she really? Suppose this is that part in the 3D chess game where she 
/does/ end up being the next manager of KZYX, the way she got in charge 
of the MEC and KMEC, and look at how she screwed /those/ pooches. The 
cabal behind her, just as manipulative and oppressive and authoritarian 
and censorious as the people they imagine they bravely oppose, will 
self-destruct from the cognitive dissonance and glee of it, and that'll 
be the /next/ kerfuffle, in 2024 or '25. Someone like Beth or Sakowicz 
will tell the tenth of the damning truth that was left dangling outside 
when the door slammed, like the tip of a dirty sock, and you and Sally 
and A.M. Stenberg will tell them to be civil and sweet and knock it off 
with the meanness, and someone flicks the lights off and back on and it 
all starts all over again, and I sit here for ten minutes and write this.

I was driving Juanita to work today. She was doing her calligraphy 
project and periodically psychically reading the road and telling me 
which lane to get in, in case I was daydreaming and might miss the 
offramp, and I was daydreaming-- partly organizing my sleep dreams of 
last night to type them quicker later, partly humming a Tim Minchin song 
from one of his live shows that's been playing in my head lately when I 
wake up, that I'll be playing for a break in my KNYO show Friday night, 
but also thinking about a Gary Larson /Far Side/ cartoon from forty 
years ago, where there's a herd of cows in a field, placidly, dully 
grazing. One cow looks up, startled, and shouts, "Hey, this is grass! 
We've all been eating grass!" There isn't anything after that, but one 
can imagine that none of the other cows so much as twitched at this 
revelation and the cow who spoke put its head back down and resumed 
eating grass. Speaking of which, the microwave just pinged. Ramen (and 
included flavor packet), with lots of added red onions, garlic, jalapeno 
peppers, spinach, meatballs; and you put the frozen peas in last so they 
pop when you chew. Yum, it's so good.

While I'm here, I might as well mention: KNYO-LP Fort Bragg has had a 
disaster. We're still on the air, just not as high in the air, because 
the early January storm flattened our organic tower. KNYO needs $5,000 
to get back up to full height and reach which, being a low power (LP) 
station is not far to begin with, so that's important. Unlike any other 
radio station you know of, at KNYO not a single penny of what you donate 
goes to someone running the station. It all goes to keep the station on 
the air. Please go to KNYO.org and click on the big red heart and help 
out. Whether you help or not, I'll be reading all kinds of stories all 
Friday night there, just like I have for the last 26 years at KNYO and, 
for awhile, KMEC, and before that, KMFB. Email me anything you want me 
to read on the radio, and then tune in and hear what it sounds like. 
This is a method of unfolding the writer that you are. And there are 
other shows. Go to KNYO.org and look at the schedule. Consider doing a 
show of your own. It's easy and fun.

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