[Kzyxtalk] Response to KZYK Board of Directors Public meeting

[John Sakowicz]

Thanks, Marco. Well said, my brother. Keep on sayin' it.

John


> On 02/02/2023 5:04 PM Marco McClean <memo at mcn.org> wrote:
> 
>  
> 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
> 
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