[Kzyxtalk] How hard can it be to understand?

[Marco McClean]

Robert Spies wrote:

 > Marco, Perhaps your ongoing complaints about the cost of paying a 
general manager could be supplemented by your idea of a livable salary 
in a competitive market and even some suggestions of well qualified 
persons that would work full time for little or nothing. Don't forget 
about medical insurance and workman's comp and other fringe benefits. A 
little research will reveal that $60K is an extraordinarily low annual 
salary for an experienced executive. And as a programmer (Co-host of the 
Ecology Hour) I am happy to volunteer some of my time and do not feel I 
am taken advantage of.

Marco here. Robert, I'm not complaining that management at KZYX is paid. 
You and so many others have the same wrong argument cued up and ready 
every time. You're deliberately not seeing that the manager/CEO of KZYX 
has had, all along, a bookkeeper to keep the books, an operations 
manager to manage the operations, a program director to direct the 
programs, an underwriting coordinator to coordinate the underwriting, 
and an engineer to engineer, and six figures of tax-derived money to pay 
them all to do those things. What's left for the manager to manage 
besides faking up a financial report once a year for the board?

Bob Young really manages all of KNYO, and he volunteers to do it so 
there'll be a radio station for him to do his show, and for us. Others 
volunteer and help because he does. Marshall Brown teaches at Mendo High 
and manages KAKX. He does all those things listed above because /he/ 
also is in it for radio, and not for the money, and kids and grownups 
volunteer and help and do their shows. I volunteer to do my show. Just 
like you, Robert, I don't feel like I'm being taken advantage of, but 
unlike you, I really am not. The first job of a manager of any business, 
profit or nonprofit, is to pay the workers before he pays himself. If 
your manager is pocketing the money your work brings in, and not paying 
you, you are not only being taken advantage of, however you feel about 
it, but you are hurting all workers everywhere. Just because you're 
independently wealthy and don't need money or you simply don't know any 
better, doesn't excuse you from facing this.

Speaking of which, there is no excuse for KZYX burning through almost 
three quarters of a million dollars every year. KZYX has always cost 
vastly more than it ever really had to. That is so not top talent; 
that's crappy or criminal managing, or both.

For five years in the early-middle 1990s I published a county-wide 
newspaper. I built the light table and the computers, answered the phone 
and answering machine. I sold and designed the ads. I did the art, 
typeset and laid out the paper, made the print run to Willits Printing, 
did the delivery run all over the county, mailed out papers to the 
subscription list, and always exactly paid for it by the advertising. I 
did all that in four or five days' work per issue, at first an issue 
every two weeks, then every three, then once a month, for 76 big, 
complicated issues, total, and kept myself alive with day jobs in 
between paper weeks. I printed everything anyone wrote and sent in, and 
everything anyone said into the answering machine, and everyone who 
wrote regularly got a regular column. Many people volunteered to help 
with this or that part of the paper: typing, driving a delivery run, 
poetry. (I gave Bill Kovanda an IBM XT computer with one floppy drive 
and a stack of disks that each had a word processor program on it and 
enough space for the poetry pages he collected. Two full newspaper pages 
of poetry every issue.) I advertised for cast-off computers, fixed them 
and gave them away to regular writers. Sean Harris and Jill Taylor often 
came in to enter handwritten or typed material. The woman who wrote the 
Dear Aunt Phoebe column did several partial delivery runs. A girl named 
Julie typed sometimes, and drew cartoons. Jennifer Benorden. I can't 
think of all their names now. Everyone involved in that paper was top 
talent, Robert, speaking of top talent. And before /Memo/ there was the 
/Mendocino Commentary/. Harry Blythe managed that. He paid Judy Brown to 
do art and layout. He paid Carol Root to edit and typeset it on an IBM 
Selectric Composer typewriter. When Carol left and I typeset the 
/Commentary/ for its last two years, he paid me. He came around for a 
day or two each issue, to catch up with advertisers. Those were the 
days. Also for almost 15 years Bob Woelfel paid me for my radio show, by 
the hour for the first two hours of each show and by a cut of the 
advertising/underwriting money my show brought in. Every month, he paid 
all of us at KMFB before he cashed his own check, in a depressed radio 
market, on a commercial radio station that didn't get a single penny in 
government grants.

Compared to that... heck, compared to a clerk in a shoe store or a 
teenage shift manager at McDonald's, managing KZYX is nothing. I have 
built and run whole real working radio stations from circuit diagrams 
and parts pulled from discarded household electronics at the dump. I can 
make a case that I put more time and energy and heart into doing my KMFB 
and then KNYO and KMEC and KAKX radio show than anyone at KZYX, 
including Andre or any of the former so-called managers, nor you too, 
ever put into radio there... In 2016 I offered to manage KZYX and pay 
the airpeople, and my application was ignored and tossed. KZYX has 
always been swimming in plenty of money to do it, and the manager has 
never even considered paying the airpeople, while never failing to cash 
his or her $5,000 a month check for doing little more than sitting in a 
chair and watching the tax-derived and rich donor money roll in.

Robert, there might be many reasons why you don't feel taken advantage 
of. No matter what they are, they are no case for the manager not paying 
you, even if all you do there is turn on a mic, ID the station, and talk 
on the phone with your friends, or play your record collection, or start 
a playlist running. If your work is valuable, you should be paid. If you 
don't need the money, tear up the check. If your work is not valuable, 
then you should get out of the way and let someone in whose work is, and 
advocate for their being paid.

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

----