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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/18/2017 7:32 PM, Mitch Clogg
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:e063d1ee-1d62-fdb0-a456-714aa1c5be37@mcn.org">
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<font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">I feel your frustration
with KZYX. Jim Heid doesn't. I don't remember whatever I've
heard about him, but I take it he has enjoyed success, and I've
felt his disapproval and dismissal of me. He appears to be a
very establishment guy, with zero tolerance for boat-rockers.</font><br>
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<br>
<br>
You might recall Jim Heid wrote a couple of years ago against my
crazy idea of paying airpeople as though what they do has value.
They'd have to declare it on their taxes, and all that rigamarole,
and who would want to have to go to the trouble? And can you imagine
trying to get deejays to clock in and out? And all for a piddly
amount of money. Not worth it. A bookkeeping nightmare for everyone
involved, he wrote.<br>
<br>
At KMFB every month I turned in my hours written on a piece of
paper. That was the extent of any bookkeeping nightmare. The
bookkeeper used a computer program that kept track of everything and
printed checks. KMFB paid me about $2,500 a year, it was one of
several part-time paying gigs (Mendocino Microcomputers, Mendocino
Theater Company...), and I got a W2 form that added three minutes,
if that, to doing my taxes. Granted, some of that money was for
maintenance work, for example, being on call to drive for a
temporary replacement transmitter or to fix a cooling fan in the
transmitter shack or build a phone hybrid box or align the satellite
dish or something, but most of it was regular hourly pay for my show
and my 20-percent cut of the underwriting my show brought in.<br>
<br>
Here's the experiment I suggested for KZYX: Give each of the
airpeople a check for $1,000 for just last year's work, and then see
how many of them go /pshaw, who needs this?/ and tear it up, and see
how many of them cash it and spend the money on gas or food or one
month's rent. That's how you find out how popular getting even a
piddly $80 extra per month is.<br>
<br>
Speaking of underwriting, they're paying a guy in the office at KZYX
like $30,000 or $40,000 a year to "coordinate business
underwriting". They try to keep it a secret exactly how much they
pay themselves in the office there, but if he brings in enough
/extra/ underwriting to even justify his own salary I'd be very
surprised. Why not divide that money among the airpeople? It's their
shows people are paying to hear, after all.<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Marco McClean<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:memo@mcn.org">memo@mcn.org</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com">http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com</a>
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