Ex-Publisher Dale Named President of Music Center

Former Los Angeles Herald Examiner Publisher Francis L. Dale was named Tuesday to the newly created post of president of the Music Center of Los Angeles County, the board of governors of the downtown performing arts complex announced.

Citing a six-month “leadership vacuum” at the center, Dale, 64, told a press conference at the center that in two months he would release a report outlining plans to assure Los Angeles’ position as the artistic “capital of the world” by the end of the century.

“The Music Center is the centerpiece of the musical and theatrical life of Southern California,” Dale said. “It will surely be America’s foremost performing arts center before the year 2000.”

Dale became publisher of the Herald Examiner in 1977. He left last year to become commissioner of the Major Indoor Soccer League but resigned that post in April. His resignation was effective June 1.

Dale formerly served as president of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team and as president and publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper. From 1974 to mid-1976 he was a presidential representative to a United Nations organization in Geneva, holding the rank of ambassador.

Dale said that his first priority in his new position will be to produce a plan to organize public support for the Music Center and to promote it nationally and internationally.

The chairman of the Music Center’s board of governors, Los Angeles attorney F. Daniel Frost, said Dale, also an attorney, will bring the “independence, professionalism and a knowledge of advocacy that is needed” to the complex.

The chairman of the Music Center Operating Co., Eaton W. Ballard, said Dale “is aware of the problems and opportunities ahead of us.”

Foremost among the problems has been the extended absence of any full-time top manager at either of the center’s two principal divisions--the operating company, which manages the complex itself, and the Performing Arts Council, the center’s main fund-raising and policy-making operation that also raises part of the operating budgets for the center’s resident companies.

Both groups have been without chief executives for months. Former Performing Arts Council President Michael Newton resigned in March after an extended medical leave and Music Center Operating Co. President Allan H. Colman resigned in January.

Formally appointed to fill the vacancy at the arts council, Dale will have full-time responsibility for the Music Center complex and its staff, which previously reported to the president of the operating company. (The operating company’s Ballard said that there would be no replacement for Colman.)

Dale was hired by the Music Center on a three-year contract at a salary that he said was “confidential at this time.” Dale said his lack of arts experience would not hamper his running of the huge complex.

Management Is Key

“I don’t have to be able to hit high C to manage this center,” Dale said. “Management is management. You’re managing people. It doesn’t matter whether you’re making widgets or Caterpillars.”

The arts council is concluding a $9.5-million fund-raising drive on June 30. Arts council officials said that the drive has yet to reach its goal.

Dale declined to characterize his new role as a merging of the arts council with the operating company. He insisted, however, that the two organizations will be more closely allied than in the past.

“The level of cooperation will take a quantum leap,” Dale said, “even if I’m the only one doing the leaping.”

Dale and other Music Center officials characterized his planned report as a master “vision” for the center for the next 14 years.

“This community deserves a bold statement of what we want to be,” Dale said. “By the year 2000 this (Los Angeles) will be the capital of the world. That’s got to be in the arts, as well as the economy.”

Expansion Issue

Dale said his plan would address oft-discussed and oft-delayed proposals to expand the arts complex. Not convinced that expansion is necessary, however, Dale said he will try to determine whether there is a real need for an expanded center as well as explore means of raising funds should expansion be desired.

He said he would circulate his proposals among community groups and leaders before releasing the plan.

“We dare not delay the long-term studies and planning that will assure us of being first in the arts,” Dale said.

Last year, the Music Center attracted more than 2 million people to about 1,100 events at its three theaters--the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum and the Ahmanson Theatre--according to a spokeswoman.

The center’s seven resident arts companies, including the Philharmonic, the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum, the Joffrey Ballet and others, have a combined annual budget of more than $45 million.