[Kzyxtalk] Rich's letter.

[Marco McClean]

Rich Culbertson wrote:

Hello KZYX Community,

I’ve been asked to make a statement about my dismissal as KYZX’s 
Operations Director. I have added the gory details below if you want 
more, but for the preface I’ll just say this:

I love and support the idea of KZYX, and have since even before I 
arrived 17 years ago. I want it to survive. I don’t want the staff 
frustrated and feeling attacked by the public, especially for something 
that they had nothing to do with. I commend them all for working in what 
I now believe is a dysfunctional and toxic workplace. You can share my 
disagreement, disappointment and even controlled anger but please also 
share my feeling that everyone at KZYX is there to perform a very 
important role to our community and need to be able to work without 
personal attacks and derision. Please feel free to let the people 
involved in this decision that you have an issue with recent management 
actions, as they need to hear from the listeners, but never engage 
people who don’t wish to do wish to discuss it.

We need many more members, not less. As we gain community voters (at a 
low of $25) we can usher in Board Members who understand their role and 
are responsive to the views of the community they serve. The way to 
improve things is by increasing members and voting for good Board 
Members who in turn hire a good, experienced, community oriented General 
Manager who will supervise a good staff.

KZYX has an obligation to the community that funds it and unfortunately 
I see a dangerous loss of focus from local communication, local 
fundraising and an effort to change the tenor of the station in an 
attempt to get big donors hung up on stupid (unimportant to the mission) 
details and national and regional grants all to fund the new building. I 
strongly support the new building (always have) but not at the expense 
of current broadcast capabilities or by losing the heart of the station.


Now, to set the firing record straight:

On Dec. 2, 2024 I came in to work at 5:30am (as usual), and started 
getting the day ready. Dina came in around 8:30 or 9:00, said hi and 
went to the back office. Minutes later she came back out front and said 
she wanted to talk. She asked what I thought the state of the station 
was in. I told here we are at a crisis point and I need help and we need 
to get back on focus. She replied I think we need to “make a change.” I 
asked “Am I’m being fired?” She said yes. She handed me a letter with my 
final check (including earned vacation time.) No warning, no severance 
pay was given, no chance to save my job, just a note saying “effective 
immediately”. I was thrown away like used trash. I would have never left 
KZXYX without super advanced notice to allow for my replacement. (way 
more than 2 weeks) but I had to go immediately. She also tried to bribe 
me by saying if I resign with a smile I could get a cake and goodbye 
party. Are you kidding me?!

I asked for an explanation. She said “poor performance.” I felt strongly 
that I successfully disputed (with evidence) each of her examples and 
asked for arbitration. She said, “fine but it won’t change anything.” 
(They then never followed up on my request.) I then asked how long I 
would have to transition to the next person? She said this was effective 
immediately and I had to leave today. She claimed to have gotten 
complete BOD support, staff support, Marty’s support, some programmers 
support and it was all vetted through a lawyer. I have not confirmed any 
of that. When I asked about the transition of what was my baby for 17 
years Dina went on to gleefully say she already contacted Brian Henry 
and they decided who should replace me. Not a hiring committee, not the 
rest of the staff just Dina with Brian’s help. If what she claims is 
true it would seem that there was plenty of time to have an office 
meeting where details are laid out for the necessary improvements to 
keep a job that has been exceptionally executed for over 17 years and 
Whose steadfast loyalty would earn the right to try to make it work the 
way any decent employer would do or maybe give a transition date that 
could allow for a gracefully exit over a few months allowing for a 
smooth transition and for an employee that served the station well to 
prepare for a change in budget.

I really feel stabbed in the back. But most, (over 71 and growing) 
programmers and volunteers have reached out with words of support and 
disagreement with Dina’s move.  My sadness and disappointment are only 
countered by the overwhelming support I’ve gotten from all of you. I’m 
stunned (and a little frightened) how many KZYX people have contacted me 
with good supporting thoughts and so many ordinary folks have recognized 
me from the website or from my voice or the building fund video etc. and 
come up to express their disbelief, anger and good wishes for me. I even 
got a recent offer but it was out of the area in a dangerously hot area 
(fatally unhealthy for my partner) and didn’t pay well so I had to thank 
them and continue to hunt.

I should say that the staff have all assured me that they did NOT 
approve of this move. The Board of Directors acted as a rubber stamp for 
Dina and never once contacted me to confirm what was being said about me.


Now for the important part of all of this.

I love and respect community radio. I feel strongly that it needs to be 
saved. Please don’t let KZYX be destroyed. The community needs to take 
control back.

Right now we have a corporate style governance taking over the 
sensibility of the spirit of the station. I was constantly under 
pressure do things outside my job description to save the station money. 
Management got hyper-vigilant about staff hours and they worried more 
about appearances for grants then they did for the function and purpose 
for the station itself. Our recent on-air emergency response (or lack 
thereof) was embarrassing. KZYX staff have to do what is necessary to 
serve our community! Long hours, wild equipment setups, exhausting 
discussions are all part of the responsibility we take on. The folk who 
try to claim they won’t let this job take over their lives don’t last 
here. This job is that important that it SHOULD take over your life. 
It’s a matter of public safety. We needed less time talking to the 
bookkeeper (although Steve is a great guy) or the GM and more time doing 
the many, many details of our jobs.

Thank you all for indulging me in all of this. I honestly felt that 
after making KZYX my home for over 17 years, I had to make it clear that 
I gave everything and would have continued to give it all until I 
couldn’t anymore. I understood that at some point we’d need someone to 
replace me in my job, but I expected to hand it over to someone else who 
cared as much as I did and would build on what I started and hopefully 
improve it. I would have loved to be treated with respect and be given 
the time to go out with my head held high and proud of my years there. 
Now I leave feeling used, lied to and that I wasted 17 years of my life. 
I have to remind myself that I was a part of a great team that literally 
saved lives.


A now a rebuttal to Dina’s claim’s:

Dina claims the was no problem between her and I. I would not agree with 
that whatsoever. She may not have heard me complaining every second I 
saw her because I try to get along with people and work with what I have 
and not force the issue. If she wants to claim that is equal to liking 
or respecting each other, she’s mistaken. I made it very clear that I 
felt like I wasn’t being listened to and that I was not provided the 
support (time, assistance, money, etc.)

Dina also said in the release to the programmers/public that there was 
no sudden incident that forced this nor any conflicts with staff. That 
was true but it begs the question if it wasn’t an emergency then why 
wasn’t I given the respect I’ve earned to be warned my job was in danger 
and be given a chance to change whatever she wasn’t happy with.

Dina’s allegations were that we had too many incidents of dead air and 
that the generator died at a bad time and I should have seen that 
coming. I plead partially guilty about both the dead air and the 
problems with the generator. But neither problem was happening because I 
was lazy or that I was not actively trying to address it.

Most of my time lately at KZYX was been spent new building issues like a 
temporary internet set-up
At the new building only to be literally yelled at by Brian’s partner 
who happens to be the project manager. Dina never apologized for setting 
me up for that shit. I also was maintaining the Talmage, Fort Bragg and 
Willits remote studios, setting up new phones and personal email 
addresses, fixing and upgrading computers while trying to stay within 
our budget, preparing for pledge drives, doing remote broadcasts, 
working with and around aging software, and training new volunteers. All 
this of course is in addition to the constant ordeal of overseeing the 
extremely complex weekly on-air broadcast DAD playlist and managing live 
feeds for live special programming. (WHICH HAS WORK AT KHSU FOR 28 YEARS 
AND HERE AT KZYX FOR 18 YEARS!!!) During those years Enco logged into 
them plenty of times and never said it was wrong. It was set up of our 
situation. I along with a chief Engineer from KUSP were the ones who 
installed it at KZYX 1 full year before I was ever hired at KZYX. I was 
called back a month later because DAD had become too much for them all 
to deal with. I came back and set it up exactly like I had it at KHSU 
and it worked flawlessly for years and only recently struggled. (You can 
confirm all of this with Burton Segal who was the Ops guy before me.)  I 
asked many, many to replace the DAD PC with a Windows 11 machine and was 
always told to wait for it to crap out before we have to spend that kind 
of money in the lean years. Then I was told to right for the right 
moment in the budget cycle which never seemed to come and then most 
recently I was told on many occasions by Marty and Brian to wait for the 
new building since it’s getting all new equipment.

For literally years— (and in one case a full decade) -- I have begged 
Brian to address major issues, but they never got done. I asked for the 
88.1 signal to be fixed, since it was not reaching the public as well as 
it used to and worse, almost every time it went off it wouldn’t turn 
back on and I had to drive up to the tower and manually turn it back on. 
Brian always told me he had a plan, he had a plan, he had a plan. He 
also told me he wanted to see if some emergency money or money around 
the new building would pay for the upgrade, so we should wait before 
doing anything major. (I notice that Brian or Andre with Brian finally 
fixed 88.1 the first week I was gone, which is real cute and shitty!)

I also asked him to address the 91.5 dropouts. He said the inland signal 
needed new arrays on the broadcast antenna, and the antenna needs to be 
re-tuned and since everything will change soon with the new set up in 
Ukiah, we should just wait to replace it. (Just wait, and then blame the 
Ops guy.)

The biggest concern I expressed to Brian (because it’s an FCC 
violation), was that we didn’t have full control of the transmitters 
remotely. I begged and begged for new telemetry. Finally, we got the 
equipment, thanks to an Area Foundation grant. But Brian would never put 
them in. For a long while it was because he said he had no time. (which 
I defended for him) Then he eventually did hook up a phone connection to 
ONE of the transmitters. However, he didn’t install the other one. Also 
that’s not what we bought from the Area Foundation grant. He said, it 
was because he wanted to wait for the new building. (I doubt the FCC 
would agree.) So, the equipment that the Area Foundation paid for sits 
under my desk and in the caboose to this day. Marty even had me sign a 
document to the Area Foundation saying the equipment had been installed, 
when in fact we only used a couple of PC’s. from the grant.

I certainly own my own issues. With many new programs and programmers, 
it became more difficult for Eddie and I to program our DAD playlist and 
many mistakes were made which yet added to more down time. After 18 
years of service DAD also started experiencing issues (no doubt because 
it desperately needed and upgrade.) KZYX wasn’t able to afford the new 
DAD PC at the time this first came up and there were concerns raised by 
a developer from ENCO I met at NAB (National Association of 
Broadcasters) that there were also issues in how DAD was talking to the 
Wheatstone Board

I also confess to not being as sharp in recent months. Dina accused me 
of being stoned, and while I don’t admit to that specifically, I do 
admit that I have had a tough year that included heavy medication both 
prescribed and homeopathic to address severe pain in my back and knees 
and from a botched dental procedure. This year also included a ton of 
depression following the loss of a family member and then the election. 
I expressed this to both Marty and Dina, but apparently my medical and 
mental health conditions were not considered or accommodated here at 
this progressive, community business as they are at PG&E and other 
businesses.

In her public message to the Programmers about my firing, Dina focused 
on an incident with the generator. Here’s the true story. A couple of 
times during the summer the automatic generator tests stopped happening. 
However, the generator ALWAYS worked during this time. I got Rich Martin 
to come out and look at it and he found nothing wrong. Later in late 
fall the generator test failed again. I called Rich Martin again 
mentioning the weather getting worse, and I asked him to find out what 
was happening. Again, it was still auto-starting, just not doing the 
weekly test for some reason.

I had been pressured all year to take vacation, so I was planning to 
squeeze in some time off before the end of the year. Unfortunately, as I 
was about to go there was a warning of a coming storm. I offered--and in 
fact insisted that I change plans and skip the vacation. But every staff 
member encouraged me to take my vacation anyway, including Dina.

A few days before my vacation, the generator failed to auto-start. It 
would still start at the generator itself. I called Rich Martin again, 
and he said the soonest he could come out was the next Friday. I took 
what I could get from him and asked around if there was anyone else who 
could help with it sooner. I got no good answer, so we had to wait and 
hope we didn’t need to run out in the rain to start it. Days later into 
the next week and while I was on vacation, the generator then failed 
completely. Dina called Rich Martin and he came out that Friday (as he 
told me he would). He found a hidden wire had been chewed through by an 
animal and he said wouldn’t have been easy to find. Dina’s version is 
that she was the hero who called Rich Martin and that I carelessly went 
on vacation without caring if things were working or not.

Sadly, since the moment Dina moved from Board President to being Interim 
General Manager, I have felt no respect from her. I felt that she either 
tuned out or disregarded most things I brought up. I tried to sit with 
her in her office and talk with her and even politely said she was being 
micromanager. She rejected that and said she was trying to stay out of 
the way. She didn’t express any dissatisfaction with my work and seemed 
to hear the concerned I raised but in fact she then became much worse 
than a micromanager by questioning every step the staff made, imposing 
program changes and prioritizing my task with her needs rather than my 
priorities for the station. I gave her a long list of projects I was 
working on with the top priorities in red at the top of the list. She 
never offered or provided any help to achieve those top priorities. But 
she did not hesitate to put me on some unimportant task and those top 
priorities sat up there for years. She feels she can direct things 
better than the staff that performing the job and process they have 
succeed with for decades.

I even mentioned to coworkers at that time that I felt uneasy and 
wondered if she would try to cherry pick stuff to fire me. It was a huge 
added stress on top of an already difficult time for me.

I won’t go into the many issues with repeated programs, dead air money, 
being wasted and more that have resulted since my firing. I was kind 
enough to help Eddie fix a problem that went on for at least 3 days. I 
was never contacted by Andre and would have received the call well since 
I had no reason to blame any of this on him. I now hear he’s chosen to 
take unprofessional pot shots at me and my work with snark like, ‘people 
tell me they liked how the other guy raced in to fix things but I think 
it’s better to find out why it failed’. That’s such pathetic shit. I’ve 
been in radio for almost 35 years. I have help KZYX succeed to beyond 
its 35 years with dedicated and professional skill. I was also using the 
last year or so trying to study to be a Chief Engineer (a task KZYX said 
they supported me taking the time to do.) In fact recently moved up to 
Certified Broadcast Technician which completes the 2nd of the 3 levels 
to became A Certified Engineer from Society of Broadcast Engineers to be 
fully certified Engineer. You shouldn’t have to shit on the previous guy 
to make yourself look good. Sad to hear that.

I see that management has now given the support, time and money to spend 
to address what I begged them to let me do. I was always told to wait 
for a bump in the budget cycle (which never seemed to come at the right 
time for Marty or Dina (I told Dina all of this and even gave her my 
priority list but something she wanted do trumped that list every time. 
(There are literally years’ worth of emails confirming this!)

I felt I had an affable personality that worked well here for almost two 
decades. (and 8 GM’s.) But personalities aside, look what’s happened the 
last few years. We lost a super effective Program Director in Alicia 
Bales, we lost both Renee Wilson and Sara Reith for their own reasons 
that included the stress of working at KZYX. We lost Victor, twice. (he 
was obviously a bad hire) We will be losing our great bookkeeper Steve 
Winkle soon. We’ve had one staff person pack up and walkout out of 
frustration (and then they came back because of KZYX’s mission) And 
there have been complaints from others that show their frustration with 
the current manager, yet no one hears the staff concerns and the BOD is 
not interested in doing anything but what Dina wants. As a result, the 
station suffers frequent disruptions and instability from a high staff 
turnover.

Thanks so much everyone. I will always love and respect the staff and 
programmers I’ve worked with and the community I served. Please save KZYX.

Sincerely, Rich Culbertson