Calvin Smith; Radio Pioneer Guided KFAC

Calvin Smith, who launched his first Los Angeles radio station in 1926 with a $200 investment and went on to introduce KFAC’s enduring classical music format, has died in Hawaii.

Leonore Kingston, vice president of Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, said Smith was 86 when he died Aug. 6 in Koloa, Kauai.

Smith was a member of the group of former radio performers and executives founded in 1966 by Edgar Bergen and Jim (Fibber McGee) Jordan.

In 1926, Smith and Los Angeles High School classmate Ben McGlashan scraped up $200 and went on the air as station KGFJ. They broadcast only when they had something to say, then went off the air and spent the balance of their time trying to sell commercials so they could resurface the next day.

Smith quit the chase and went to work for a more established station--KFAC--in 1932 as chief engineer. He soon became manager and found himself trying to balance Depression-era budgets with a broadcast retinue of expensive actors, singers and musicians. He hit on the concept of using recorded classical music introduced by announcers who were classical-oriented.

His first success was the ongoing Southern California Gas Co. two-hour evening concert, broadcast for years by announcer Thomas Cassidy and still heard nightly on station KKGO, which became the city’s sole commercial classical station after KFAC was sold in 1989.

Carl Princi, who began with KFAC in 1953 and continues on the air with KKGO, remembered the station as one where only a select three, always tasteful commercials were heard during any hour.

After Smith retired from KFAC, he became active in the National Assn. of Broadcasters, the Los Angeles County Music Commission, the Southern Broadcasters Assn. and the California State Broadcasters before moving to Hawaii a few years ago.

Smith is survived by his wife, Kay.