Diversity Report

Mendocino County Public Broadcasting (MCPB), license holder for KZYX and KZYZ, serves a large, mountainous, rural region of northern California.  The economy of our area, like much of the United States, has not performed well since 2008. 

MCPB offers arguably the greatest available training and practice opportunities for anyone in this area to learn and improve broadcasting-related skills.  In its 24 year history, members of staff, volunteer programmers and student interns have benefitted directly from their experience here and then gone on to work at other broadcasting and media organizations. 

This tradition continues to this day.  We have in the past two years trained six student interns in a variety of broadcast and media production skills, including on-air technique, live recording, studio recording, sound editing, digital audio conversion, web page development, and internet skills related to radio broadcast.

We air a local program that is entirely produced and edited by students (under the adult supervision of an award-winning radio producer) called “Youth Speaks Out.”  Some of those students have gone on to college and used the skills they learned here to do more work in media, often at their college radio station. 

We currently have 108 local volunteer on-air radio programmers, almost all of whom learned the craft here.  In addition, we have trained dozens of volunteers in editing and recording skills and taught many of them to create and edit web page content and archives directly related to their programs. 

Current MCPB staff benefits from membership in the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB), which entitles us to take their many training seminars as well as attend their annual national conference.  Through our affiliation with the NFCB, MCPB staff members have, in addition to formal learning processes, the ability to converse, network an talk shop with their peers from all around the country.  This enhances our individual ability to learn about and potentially seek other work opportunities in the broadcast field.

MCPB reaches out to all parts of our listening area.  We encourage all, regardless of age, race, religion or political affiliation to participate.  We operate three broadcast studios in our large and spread-out area which makes it easier for volunteers.  Our outreach efforts include on-air invitations to come and learn, participation in job fairs (when they occur), booths set up at public events and in public places, and coordination with organized and informal intern programs in the local high schools and college.