KUSC SIGNALS ITS GRADUATION

It’s fat, it’s highbrow and it’s at the center of the public radio wars.

KUSC-FM (91.5), the West Coast’s leading public radio station, quit its longstanding affiliation with National Public Radio last week. Ironically, part of the reason for its unprecedented mutiny is traceable to its immense success as a public radio station . . . a success that has eclipsed that of many Los Angeles commercial radio stations.

KUSC is rich enough to have closets larger than the studios at some commercial outlets.

There’s the 26-foot motor home in the parking lot. It’s packed with all the electronic equipment needed for a remote broadcast from, say, Trumps, the trendy restaurant site for “Live From Trumps,” KUSC’s Saturday arts discussion series.

There’s the staff of 38 full-time employees. They see to such details as typing a minute-by-minute log of any on-air miscues, however slight. Almost everyone on the staff has a desk-top computer.

And, of course, there’s the financial support: 250,000 listeners, 25,000 subscribers, dozens of corporate underwriters and a yearly budget of $3.5 million.

Yet life at KUSC hasn’t always been so comfortable.

When General Manager Wallace Smith took over the KUSC controls 13 years ago, the station’s budget was $7,500 and the programming was equally insubstantial. The sound was often the chaotic, monophonic, byproduct of an on-campus, student-run radio laboratory.

Smith decided that a university radio station shouldn’t have much to do with a university--outside of accepting its monies. He moved the station off campus, got rid of the students, switched to classical music and signed up with National Public Radio. With this new “professional environment,” as Smith likes to call it, the station began to grow and soon flourished.

Now, amid all its stereophonic tranquillity, KUSC finds itself at the eye of the hurricane. This month, it becomes the first major public station in the country to totally drop National Public Radio and remain affiliated only with NPR’s chief rival, American Public Radio.

The reason, Smith says, is financial. The reaction, Smith says, is emotional.

“We’ve caught some holy heck,” Smith said. “People say, ‘I’ll quit! I’ll give my money to KCRW (the Santa Monica public station that is KUSC’s chief rival and which remains a staunch and powerful NPR affiliate).’

“On the other hand, for every one of those who comes in, somebody says, ‘Good, you’re going to bring back (APR’s) “As It Happens.” I’ll become a subscriber again.’ ”

“As It Happens,” a daily Canadian Broadcast Co. news program, is one of more than 150 programs distributed over the American Pubic Radio network. Other popular APR offerings include “St. Paul Sunday Morning” (a chamber-music program), “A Prairie Home Companion” (a comedy-musical-variety program), “MonitoRadio” (a daily news magazine produced by the Christian Science Monitor) and the KUSC-originated “The Los Angeles Philharmonic Concert Series.”

Smith insists, though, that his NPR/APR decision has nothing to do with programming. But since APR has quickly established itself as a force in public radio, Smith’s choice became easier and less painful. As Smith said, “Now there is an alternative available.”

“The reaction to ‘MonitoRadio’ has been very positive,” Smith said. “When we put it on, it generated a very, very good audience. . . . That was one of the first moves that we made where we decreased our use of NPR programs and have not heard one bad word.”

KUSC’s annual cost of staying with NPR, according to Smith, would have risen “from what was originally $24,000 to $343,000.”

The network made bad management decisions and is now trying to get its affiliates to bail it out, based on a graduated formula that makes larger stations pay the most and small stations, the least, according to Smith.

“NPR bankrupted itself by trying to put together programming that was so damned sophisticated, it put them $7 million into debt,” he said.

Had KUSC stayed affiliated with both networks, Smith said, his station’s annual NPR dues would have indirectly subsidized competing Los Angeles stations who also subscribe to NPR, but pay much less because their listenership is not nearly as large as KUSC’s.

“From a business point of view, I’d be a real jerk. Why am I subsidizing my competition? KLON and KCRW will not be paying nearly that much. So because we have been successful, we’re subsidizing a program service so that (KCRW general manager) Ruth (Hirschman) can now come in and generate a large audience with NPR programming. And she screams that I shouldn’t run away, because then her costs will go up.”

Affiliates of APR have exclusive use of the service within their area, an advantage for KUSC. “It really does not make sense for every public radio station in a community playing the same (NPR) programming, especially at the same time,” Smith said. “We think by using the (APR) exclusivity, we can provide a better service to the community.”

“They (NPR) began to think they’re the only game in town.”