Classical Music Radio: What’s Not Too Stuffy and Yet Not Too Hip?

The same week that venerable classical music station KFAC-FM changed into a rock station, KUSC-FM (91.5) was featuring a two-week tryout by Canadian broadcaster Jurgen Gothe. And the out-of-towner’s informal, lighthearted style raised many an eyebrow among L.A. classical music aficionados.

“In the very week of the demise of KFAC, the Jurgen Gothe afternoon show is a veritable satire of the worst tendencies of pre-1987 KFAC: tasteless eclecticism, fatuous and overlong chitchat between selections, cutesy-pie programming conceits and, God help us, movements from symphonies and concertos,” an angry listener wrote KUSC. “How can you so misunderstand your listeners?”

KUSC program director Tom Deacon explained: “We were experimenting. It’s fun to experiment.”

As part of that experiment, the station began playing less classical music and introduced a new entertainment magazine-style talk show in the afternoons. Specials featuring rock musicians David Byrne and Frank Zappa and the ragtime music of Scott Joplin pushed the likes of Vivaldi, Beethoven and Stravinsky off the airwaves.

The intent was to lure an as-yet-untapped audience: “those 25- 45-year-old people who go to all those good restaurants on the Westside and aren’t really interested in classical music,” said KUSC general manager Wallace A. Smith.

“We have to figure out how to break down the barriers that keep people away from classical music, and that includes trying to find good music from other genres that appeals to people who are not currently classical music lovers, “ Smith said.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, KKGO-FM (105.1), formerly an all-jazz station, has inserted eight hours of classical music into its schedule. A play list is being selected and records and compact discs are being compiled to prepare for the station’s debut as a 24-hour classical station in January.

KKGO general manager Saul Levine said he doesn’t intend to play much in the way of avant-garde music nor will he mix musical genres in the way that KUSC is doing, but he does want to draw--you guessed it--a younger audience.

“The quickest way to drive away an audience is to play something that’s atonal, unfamiliar and in that vein,” he said. “We are going to play some avant-garde music, but (the play list) will be primarily the great classical, romantic and baroque music. We’re not going to lighten things. We’re not going to play semiclassical or pops or popular versions of Broadway music.”

Smith said his is not the only station in the country that has expanded its narrow focus. “I think radio in general should reach out to the largest number of people it can serve,” he said. “It’s only good stewardship of public resources to reach as many people as you can possibly reach with your radio service.”

This quest for a larger audience of younger listeners seems to have altered the face of classical music radio as it was known here for more than half a century. And it has touched off a ratings war.

In targeting the younger audience, KUSC and KKGO appear to be gearing up to do battle.

“I’m hoping that we can bridge this terrible gap, the gap that seems to exist between classical music and a whole audience group that doesn’t seem to be coming to classical music radio or coming to the Philharmonic or to classical music period,” KUSC’s Deacon said.

Although public radio KUSC is pursuing this audience more aggressively and blatantly with its eclectic repertoire and emphasis on “radio personalities” rather than musicologists, commercial station KKGO has also rejected musicologists for its staff, fearing that any suggestion of pretentiousness and an academic presentation will alienate potential listeners.

“The primary thing that we’ll be doing to get more mass appeal is to present classical music in a non-stuffy manner,” Levine said. “This has been one of the biggest drawbacks, the impression of elitism and that you have to be a musicologist to appreciate it. It’s the talking down. We don’t do that. We’ll just present it in a straightforward manner. It’s not going to be taken like medicine or castor oil.”

But many of those who dearly love the music vehemently hate KUSC’s new approach, and the station has been deluged with protest letters.

“I can’t stand Mr. Gothe’s patter, his seeming fondness of his own voice, his playing of bits and pieces of “light classics” replete with the next best thing to commercials,” wrote one listener.

Smith said: “I’m getting an awful lot of hate mail about this--let’s say I’m just having a very vigorous dialogue with our listeners. The listeners that were most bothered by it were the long-term KUSC listeners, the hard-core classical music aficionados who really want a very pure classical music format. The people most outraged by what I’m doing are the ones who want to keep it elite. I think we ought to open it up and bring more people in because I think Beethoven and Mozart would love it.

“A lot of people believe that they can’t listen to classical music because they don’t know enough,” Smith said. “The people who are real classical music fans reinforce that by sort of ridiculing people who don’t like or don’t understand music that they listen to.”

Former KUSC announcer Rich Capparela agrees with some of Smith’s remarks: “My philosophy is unstuff classical music radio by being human, by not taking it so seriously and at the same time having the necessary respect for the music.”

However, he believes that the timing of the programming changes was unwise.

“A lot of people are having trouble with the timing of KUSC’s move forward coinciding with KFAC’s demise,” Capparela said. “It’s been rough on listeners.”

Smith is worried that the classical music audience will eventually turn off the radio and confine their listening to compact discs. And he is determined to try to stave off that eventuality. To avoid that, and to keep listeners from abandoning his station, Smith has determined that KUSC should sound like most of the popular stations on the dial.

“Our characteristics include an emphasis on personality, spontaneity and companionship,” Smith said. “When we hire people we are going to look for ones who are radio personalities rather than classical music announcers.”

Said program director Deacon: “What I want is people to talk on the air the way they do in person; then I feel we’ll be able to knock down a lot of the barriers that people, particularly young people, feel against classical music,”

Capparela--a classical music announcer for 18 years who is now a deejay for soft-hits station KJOI (98.7)--says he is not certain that a casual, top-40 radio style of announcing will work.

“I’m not sure that’s appropriate for all formats,” he said. “I don’t know that classical music lends itself to (such deejay patter as) ‘Hey, nice Spandex, babe’. . . . Certainly classical music has still got a lot of trappings of stuffiness, of pretentiousness and a lot of that does need to go, but as with a lot of things, it’s the degree that counts.”

Along with playing selections that are not traditionally classical, KUSC listeners will hear shorter pieces of music, movements rather than whole works, as well as more talk (or as Smith puts it, “more opportunities for radio personalities to entertain and inform and inspire people”). That doesn’t translate to big-money giveaways or trivia contests, but it does mean more chatter, more news and information and less music. There will be some giveaways featuring tickets to classical concerts, operas and ballets, Smith said.

At KKGO, a half-dozen announcers--most of them 30ish and non-musicologists--have been hired. Mozart’s image is emblazoned on promotional T-shirts with the KKGO call letters. “It’s appealing to 20-year-olds, very appealing,” Levine said.

As part of the youth campaign, Levine has formed an alliance with UCLA under which KKGO, starting in December, will broadcast a Royce Hall program that had been heard on KUSC. Levine also plans to work with area schools sometime after the station switches from its current all-jazz to all-classical in January.

“I have personal friends in their late 30s who are devoted classical music fans and listeners,” Levine said. “Obviously there are people in their 60s, 70s and 80s who listen to classical music and obviously one day they’ll be lost. But classical music enjoyment is a matter of exposure. I don’t think anyone is born appreciating it.”

Smith said that research on public radio shows that one way to draw listeners to classical public radio stations is to provide top-notch news and information programming.

“What we’ve discovered in public radio particularly is that the growth is not amongst the classical music stations,” Smith said. “Growth in public radio is around the news and information stations. News is bringing new listeners to public radio, and classical music is staying flat. . . . The consensus is that we cannot continue to do what we’re doing if we want to be able to serve new audiences with classical music programming because we’re static, we’re stagnant.”

However, not all public stations regard classical as a moribund format. KCSN-FM (88.5), a tiny public station affiliated with Cal State Northridge, on Wednesday changed its current programming from all-country to all-classical, said the station’s general manager, Ken Mills.

“It appears as if classical is clearly a viable alternative,” Mills said.

The station has only about 1,000 listeners per average quarter-hour period, according to Arbitron ratings survey data, and cannot be heard beyond the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, Mills said. Still he is considering the change because of the dissatisfaction expressed to him by disgruntled KUSC listeners. The station will confine itself to “traditional and familiar” classical fare, Mills said. “We are not going after a particular demographic. We’ll take listeners of all ages.”

“Because we’re not so much in the ratings game we can look at it more as serving a valid audience from a standpoint of just listeners and their interest, as opposed to a particular demographic sell,” Mills said. “There are a lot of older classical listeners out there, so it would probably be smart on our part to try to incorporate as many as we could.”

Perhaps KCSN will attract the longtime KUSC listeners who are threatening to tune out as the station works at enticing younger audiences.

“It’s simply driving us away into purchasing our cassettes and CDs,” said Ellen Stern Harris, who co-chairs the Committee for Classical Music a Los Angeles-based organization with about 500 members formed after the demise of KFAC to promote the classical music radio. The committee wants a public hearing by the station’s board of directors on the issue. “This whole concept where every day whether you like it or not you have to listen to Scott Joplin or Philip Glass is simply absurd. When a whole audience was waiting for a classical need to be met, Wally Smith decided to walk away. . . . He’s ignoring the group that is dedicated to classical music.”

“This cute deejay concept is wonderful if you want adolescents. But those of us who have enjoyed the music for the sake of music and don’t listen to KUSC for constant chatter or lengthy personal comments on subjects totally unrelated are continually irritated,” Harris said. “It has enraged the audience.”

Countered Smith: “There’s a rather small number of people who are so rigid and stubborn who won’t support us while we try to search for ways to enlarge our audience.”

Smith acknowledges that he may have to kiss these listeners goodby.

“Although we would prefer that we not lose any of our subscribers, we believe that there are other people who would replace them if they choose to go away,” Smith said.