Key Host at KUSC Also Plans to Leave

On the heels of the surprise announcement by her husband and boss, Wallace A. Smith, that he was resigning as president and general manager of KUSC-FM (91.5), Bonnie Grice, the public radio station’s star host, told listeners on her “Wake Up, L.A.!” morning show Monday that she would soon be departing too.

Grice’s last day on the air at KUSC is scheduled to be Oct. 31. A station spokesman confirmed that Grice “has also submitted her resignation and will be leaving the station.”

The departure of Grice appears to have put a sudden crimp in the station’s lineup. When KUSC announced Sept. 4 that it was returning, after a lapse of seven years, to its longtime format of traditional classical music, Grice’s role remained secure--and indeed seemed to have been enhanced.

Grice was not available for further comment Monday. Nor was Stephen Lama, vice president for broadcasting for USC Radio Network and interim general manager, who was in meetings. He took over for Smith, who stepped down Friday.

KUSC began airing a mix of classical, jazz, folk and world music in 1989--the year Grice came to the station from Kent, Ohio--and fully embraced its newer sound in 1993 as Smith sought to bring new and younger listeners to the station.

Whether it was her own chatty, irreverent style or her marriage to the station chief, Grice became the target of a lot of flak from listeners who didn’t like the move away from traditional classic music and the injection of more personality in the program hosts. As one listener, a librarian, had explained a few years back: Grice is “too young, too cutesy, a little too casual.” Others, however, praised Grice and Smith for taking the stuffed shirt out of classical music and attempting to create a new audience for it.

While Grice was scheduled at the end of the month to step down as host and producer of “Wake Up, L.A.!,” which airs Mondays through Thursdays from 7-10 a.m., she was slated to host a new arts-music-interview program from 5 to 6 p.m. daily, beginning in December.

In addition, Grice was to have continued hosting and producing an expanded version of “Live on Hope Street,” a half-hour interview and musical mix that had been airing Fridays at 8 a.m. and which this month will be heard at 5:30 p.m.

Smith’s resignation, announced by USC, which holds the license for KUSC, came amid a review by a USC task force of the station’s finances and management structure and an analysis of its listenership and programming. KUSC ended its most recent fiscal year with a $500,000 deficit. The task force’s report is due at the end of this month.

“As we prepare to begin a new era,” Smith said in his resignation statement, “I feel the station needs new ideas and a fresh start. And on a personal level, I’m ready for a whole new set of challenges.”

The official changeover to classical music was formally scheduled for November with the debut of the National Public Radio show “Performance Today,” airing weekdays 11 a.m.-1 p.m. The program emphasizes concert performances recorded live throughout the United States and offers its listeners a daily portrait of what is happening in the world of classical music.

But station officials insisted that the movement back to classical has already begun. “ ‘Performance Today’ represents one more step in KUSC’s recent migration toward airing more traditional classical music,” Smith said last month. “While listeners have appreciated our airing a wide variety of music, we have determined that what they really appreciate the most is classical music.”