[Kzyxtalk] Kzyxtalk Digest, Vol 140, Issue 1

Mon Sep 1 12:18:15 PDT 2025

Bravo, Marco!
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Sent: Monday, September 1, 2025 12:00 PM
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Subject: Kzyxtalk Digest, Vol 140, Issue 1

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Today's Topics:

   1. KZYX and Labor Day. (Marco McClean)
   2. Re: KZYX and Labor Day. (Marco McClean)

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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2025 23:54:16 -0700
From: Marco McClean <memo at mcn.org>
To: "kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org" <kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org>
Subject: [Kzyxtalk] KZYX and Labor Day.
Message-ID: <3ff22a42-a621-47e1-a24a-08a8451af678 at mcn.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

Subject: KZYX and Labor Day.

On 8/31/2025 6:03 PM, Joshua Daniels wrote:
 > As many of you know, the removal of federal CPB funding has left our
local public radio station KZYX with a sizable budget deficit of nearly
$200k per year...

Marco here. Josh, hear this in a warm, friendly, amused tone. I'm gonna
give this ten minutes of my time: You started out with an obvious lie.?
In fact, last year KZYX acquired and somehow disposed of three quarters
of a million dollars. $170K of that came as a tax-derived money grant
from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. All of KZYX's real
operating expenses put together add up to considerably less than $300K.
740K minus 170K leaves $570K, close to twice the amount needed. That's a
200K-plus /surplus/, not a 200K deficit. KZYX is and has always been
swimming in money, from all the sources you mention later on in your
note, but mostly from big-money donations, many of them secret, some of
them not so secret, like the $100,000 grant a few years ago from the
heirs to a San Francisco law firm fortune. KZYX has never been in
trouble for money, and if it were in trouble for money now, that could
only be the result of chicanery, shenanigans, and/or laughably bad
management. The very well-off donor class who pay the lion's share for
KZYX, however it is managed, are richer than ever.

Josh, you say, "Lots of local programming could be on the chopping
block." That's another obvious lie. It costs KZYX nothing for local
programming. The local airpeople are not paid. And they don't need
management. They show up and do their show and go home. The 4000-watt
transmitter costs two dollars an hour to run whether there are shows
squirting through it or not. The translator stations cost a nickel or
two per hour to run. There are tower fees, and music publisher fees, and
there's rent and internet, and some beloved canned programs from a
thousand miles away whose producers are paid pretty darn well from over
1,000 NPR-colonized stations, but there's no link at all between any
rise and fall of funds at KZYX and the fate of local shows. "Your
generous donations keep the great shows you love on the air" has always
been a big fat lie.

Which reminds me, Monday is Labor Day, really Workers' Day, in
appreciation of the people who keep the wheels of the world turning with
our expertise and effort and dedication and hands and feet and brains,
such as they are. KZYX has always had plenty of money to pay at least a
token of monetary respect to the local airpeople and has never done it.
Throughout the decades of gravy train years, whenever I brought it up at
a board meeting, the response I got was, There's no money for that, and
besides, they're all volunteers. The manager/CEO never volunteers his
services. Why should he? $5,000 a month, without fail, into his personal
bank account, and not a penny for all the local airpeople prepping for
and showing up for and doing all their shows, all year long. You've seen
the books, you already know that, and it boggles the mind that it seems
right to you or to anyone.

And, Josh, you say, "I?ve seen some discussions on this ListServ
suggesting KZYX is spending too much on transmitters, infrastructure,
etc. These people are largely misinformed and have never worked in
radio. I?ve reviewed the latest KZYX budget and there really isn?t a lot
of fat to cut that isn?t going to negatively affect programming and/or
signal transmission." Wow, who are you talking about? Who are those
people and what did they actually say? I'm really curious. Because if
you're talking about me, I never said KZYX is paying too much for real
things it needs. It's disappearing money. And I've worked in commercial
and noncommercial radio and television and events and music and theater
production and publishing in Mendocino County for more than forty years.
I've built radio stations with my fingers.

Let's talk about all this on the air.

--
Marco McClean, memo at mcn.org, https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmemooftheair.wordpress.com%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7C3d6afc8b0bb54369c96908dde989c381%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638923500107588871%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GHy50zqaSCkFjTR7EK1ryt7vwYk%2FwX1LSoU6XwTs5sM%3D&reserved=0<https://memooftheair.wordpress.com/>

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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2025 01:28:15 -0700
From: Marco McClean <memo at mcn.org>
To: "kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org" <kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org>
Subject: Re: [Kzyxtalk] KZYX and Labor Day.
Message-ID: <4d1b05c8-542f-4f41-91bf-7f4b7b44e87e at mcn.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed

On 9/1/2025 12:46 AM, Joshua Daniels wrote:
 > Marco, Why don?t you disclose that you represent KNYO, and that you
want people?s money to go to KNYO instead of KZYX? Then you could just
speak in facts and not have to make disingenuous nonsensical arguments.
Just a thought.

Marco here, Josh. Okay, I'll give you another couple minutes of my time,
but that's all for tonight; I'm working on this coming week's
eight-hour-long all-Friday-night Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio show,
after all, and I have a day job to make at least a cameo appearance at
tomorrow, as well as get my car fixed, and pick up a donated computer
for my wife's mother, and visit my own mother, who is recovering from a
broken arm. I have to sleep sometime.

I disclose the existence of my show on KNYO and KAKX here at length
twice every week. I don't represent them. They allow me to connect and
do my show, and I'm grateful. And I volunteer because the managers of
the stations volunteer. If Bob Young, for example, was paying himself
with money my show brought in, I would expect to be paid for my work.
And I subscribe to the sentiment: Let a thousand flowers bloom. Support
all the art that you appreciate by supporting the artists.

The main difference between the stations you mention is broadcast
radius, which gives KZYX a far greater area to beg for money from, at
the cost of $1.90 more per hour for electricity. Yet KZYX somehow burns
up enough money to operate /fifty/ radio stations like KNYO and KAKX,
not to mention two or three times what it truly needs itself, and, I
repeat, KZYX does not pay the local airpeople, though it can and always
could. You think that's fine, I think it's cynical and Trumpish. We can
agree to disagree.

I did almost fifteen years at KMFB, all night every Friday night, and
also did a lot of engineering work for the station. KMFB had all the
reach and responsibilities and facilities and relationships and
operating expenses and complexity of KZYX, but without any government
grant money ever, and ran on 1/3 of KZYX's budget, in a depressed radio
market, and manager Bob Woelfel kept it sailing along and paid all of us
by the hour as well as a cut from the ad money we brought in, every
month, before he paid himself. It was a point of honor for him.

I'm not arguing nor shilling for anyone. I'm relating well-documented
facts, in the warm, gentle tone of a person speaking to a small child
sitting in his lap.

--
Marco McClean, memo at mcn .org, https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmemooftheair.wordpress.com%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7C3d6afc8b0bb54369c96908dde989c381%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638923500107618620%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=YoTyBjeKTDNUlGeyeMQv4tJvxJAB03JQRcx0ronYUB8%3D&reserved=0<https://memooftheair.wordpress.com/>

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End of Kzyxtalk Digest, Vol 140, Issue 1
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