[Kzyxtalk] Kzyxtalk Digest, Vol 109, Issue 1

[Scott Peterson]

Marco,

All of the people who've ever paid membership dues to KZYX ought to pay more attention.

Every year, the people in charge there file something called a Form 990. These aren't the tax forms that Dina Polkinghorne & company often pass them off as. They're annual reports open to public inspection so that John Q. Citizen can see how each nonprofit is being run. Check out their latest filing:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fIusURkvetE0lreOos5_kqUPzfLuzfKK/view?usp=sharing

On page 6, item 6, the question is asked: "Did the organization have members or stockholders?" Then check out the answer "No."

On page 9, item 1b, notice the amount reported for "Membership dues" It's fucking zero.

Then on page 7, look and see who the president is. It's Dina Polkinghorne.

So there you have it. According to the president of KZYX, there are no members or membership dues.

Sincerely,

Scott M. Peterson
Mendocino


________________________________
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Sent: Friday, February 3, 2023 12:00 PM
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Subject: Kzyxtalk Digest, Vol 109, Issue 1

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Response to KZYK Board of Directors Public meeting
      (Marco McClean)
   2. Re: Response to KZYK Board of Directors Public meeting
      (John Sakowicz)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2023 17:04:21 -0800
From: Marco McClean <memo at mcn.org>
Subject: Re: [Kzyxtalk] Response to KZYK Board of Directors Public
        meeting
To: kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org
Cc: themaj at pacific.net, gm at kzyx.org, bod at kzyx.org, pd at kzyx.org
Message-ID: <4e542720-a2eb-8b9d-c6c2-04df8aee122d at mcn.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

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



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2023 18:16:11 -0800 (PST)
From: John Sakowicz <sako4 at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [Kzyxtalk] Response to KZYK Board of Directors Public
        meeting
To: kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org
Message-ID: <907107787.517355.1675390571623 at connect.xfinity.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Kzyxtalk mailing list
> Kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org
> http://lists.mcn.org/mailman/listinfo/kzyxtalk



------------------------------

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