The Comments Aren’t as Saucy on ‘Happening’

“For the first time since I went on the air 11 years ago, I can’t play Lenny Bruce,” complained radio host Roy of Hollywood. “That’s how I take the temperature of the times: what kind of reaction I get to Lenny Bruce.”

Roy Tuckman, the all-night man at KPFK-FM (90.7), turns 50 next year but still fancies himself something of a hippie. He sports long hair and invites guests into the studio who will discuss alleged CIA murder plots, Zen Buddhism and Bob Dylan before he went electric. He likes to speak his mind and to play what he wants to play on his midnight-to-6-a.m. show “Something’s Happening!”

“I don’t make a living wage, but I have total freedom for 24 hours a week on ‘Something’s Happening!’ ” he said.

He used to have total freedom.

That was before the FCC April ruling on indecency. Nowadays, Tuckman is excruciatingly careful about what goes out over the air on his Monday through Thursday shift.

Technically, he doesn’t have to be so circumspect. The FCC issued a special dispensation in November that allows for more adult-oriented programming after midnight. But the standing rule at KPFK is: Don’t be even remotely indecent, even on the graveyard shift.

“I remain a team player for the time being,” said Tuckman. Along with every other staff and volunteer programmer at KPFK, he has agreed to curtail four-letter words, innuendo or any questionable sexual or scatological references on the air until the FCC comes up with a better definition of indecency.

“There was one slip,” he admitted. “It was a humdinger.”

In a post-April 16 broadcast, Tuckman aired the musings of a CIA turncoat about the possibility that swine fever and AIDS might have been introduced surreptitiously into Cuba by foreign agents. The former CIA member speculated on the possibility that Cubans might have contracted the diseases through sexual contact with their pigs.

“So I wrote a letter to the manager and explained how it happened,” Tuckman said. “That was the only kind of slip-up I’ve had on the show though.”

The night after the April ruling, Tuckman broadcast a program consisting of commentator Paul Harvey, evangelist Billy Graham and selections from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir “as some sort of a twisted statement to show people what it could be like” if the FCC ruling is allowed to prevail, he said.

“There’s a deadened sense in the creative process,” Tuckman said. “I can’t do anything on the air without thinking about self-censorship all the time.”

He has had to settle for political theme programs lately: a 12-hour documentary on the John F. Kennedy assassination; a program on the Iran/Contra hearings; a discussion of the politics of AIDS that Tuckman dubs “AIDS-gate.”

“I’m getting down to exposing Nazis and fascists in the government with all this real heavyweight information, but they don’t say anything nasty so it’s all right,” he said.

On Christmas Eve, he broadcast a dramatization of “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

“Five-and-a-half hours with no dirty words,” he said.

Tuckman said that he cannot hold out forever. He has combed through 30 years of comedy recordings to see how many meet the new FCC indecency standards and said he is coming up short of funny, sanitized material. Tuckman jokes that he may have to have a “Roy’s End of Decency” theme program in which he unloads all of the indecent innuendo he’s been holding back the last eight months.

“He lacks diplomacy,” said one of Tuckman’s KPFK peers. “He has a tendency to want what he wants his way regardless of what the situation calls for.”

A native of Los Angeles, Tuckman holds a master’s degree in anthropology from UCLA. He has worked off and on at KPFK for 20 years. If he weren’t rooming with a friend who has been gainfully employed the last several years, he would not be able to afford to live off his radio salary, he said.

“I do it because I love to do it. It’s like a giant classroom. . . . I’m the contact for a lot of people with a lot of worthy ideas who would otherwise not have any forum.”

Written on the wall of the KPFK men’s room is the question: “Why doesn’t Roy practice what he preaches?”

“I’m a hypocrite in some people’s eyes,” he said. “I play a lot of psychedelic programs, but I don’t take psychedelic drugs. I also do a lot of health programming and I smoke. I smoke American Spirit cigarettes. They’re organic, no pesticides, no fungicides, no petrochemicals, no flavorings.”

Somehow “Something’s Happening!” has transcended Tuckman’s hypocrisy or any of the other real or imagined misgivings that he has about himself.

“It used to be that when your name appeared on the bathroom wall, it was only a matter of time before the station manager fired you,” he said. “I’m not a sociable person. I don’t like to do live call-in shows. I’m not on the air more than five or six minutes an hour. I like to listen to the stuff I play.”

Roy of Hollywood is not so sure himself how much longer that will hold true. After all, it’s been nearly a year since he’s been able to play Lenny Bruce on “Something’s Happening!” He doesn’t want to have to wait that long before he can play it again.