Praise and Lament for the Future of KUSC

On Friday, Wallace A. Smith, president and general manager of KUSC-FM (91.5) and a fixture in public radio for a quarter-century, announced his resignation. On Monday morning, Smith’s wife, Bonnie Grice, told her “Wake Up, L.A.!” listeners that she would join her husband in classical music exile. And I can practically hear the cheers, half a world away (where the Los Angeles Philharmonic is in residence), from listeners who had grown to loathe the way they believed Smith and Grice, with their eclectic programming, had decimated a once great classical music station.

I am told that Grice generates more mail to this newspaper than any other arts figure in Los Angeles. And while most of it seethes with anger, some is adoring. I am also told that Grice sells more CDs than any other classical music deejay in America. When she gets behind a recording, listeners get their credit cards out.

Listeners who take their classical music straight found nauseating the concoctions, sanctioned by Smith and tendered by Brice, of jazz, folk, classics, what-have-you, mixed in different proportions every day. KUSC had been, after all, one of the largest and best classical music stations in America.

But something also needed to be done. America, Smith saw, was changing. And he once showed me the copious file he had been keeping of articles from all over about the arts in general and classical music in particular being in a state of crisis, given the dearth of arts education and the falling off of young audiences. He was convinced that new audiences were reachable, and the success of the early ‘90s British radio blitz of Gorecki’s Third Symphony did not escape him.

Smith also knew that he was not removing classical music from the Los Angeles airwaves when he started changing things at the station seven years ago. Those who wanted classics without adventure or fuss, if with advertisements, could, and still can, turn to the commercial station KKGO-FM (105.1), which continues doing what it (and its forebear, KFAC) had done for generations.

Consequently the news that KUSC will return to more conventional classical music is as sad as it is promising. Sure, we need an innovative, sophisticated classical music station. But we also need the kind of radical new ideas Smith was willing to try. It is no coincidence that it was Smith who originally turned a nonentity university radio station into a major national classical music force. It was Smith who brought in announcers like Jim Sveda, whose “Record Shelf” has long been one of the finest examples of radio broadcasting in any genre.

Smith’s brilliant success with KUSC and his ultimate downfall show that his devotion is more to good radio than to any specific kind of music. He always championed radio personalities, and in that regard Sveda and Grice, worlds apart musically, aren’t really all that different. Grice, whatever one thinks of her (and I rather enjoy her, especially in the car), has genuine radio smarts. She can be off-the-wall, and she is far too cute for serious listeners. But her enthusiasms are infectious.

This may get me in trouble, but I suspect sexism is also at play here. I notice that the majority of negative letters about Grice come from men and that many of her fans are women. Classical radio had once been an exclusive old boys’ club, with unctuous announcers offering proven classical masterpieces, just right for tuning in while lighting a cigar, sipping brandy and relaxing in a leather wing chair at the club.

Grice did away with all of that. She allows herself to be giddy on the air. She champions female composers. She is, in many ways, a breath of fresh air.

But KUSC was probably never the right forum for her. By bringing her and her likes in, Smith seems to have pushed the revolution further than was necessary. The whole notion of a new kind of classical programming, consequently, was offered in absolute and negative terms: out with the old and in with the new. We, in fact, need both.

Smith and Grice are, whatever the current fate of KUSC, the future. Their new ideas are good and necessary. The multicultural world no longer has a mainstream and never will again. We cannot ignore the female vote, the ethnic vote, any vote. And Grice’s shows are fine conduits for new listeners to classical music. Sometimes we may want to tune into her; sometimes not. But the choice is essential.

So L.A. can welcome the return of KUSC to strong classical music programming, hoping that it will provide creative but serious offerings, such as by broadcasting programs like “Performance Today,” an outstanding show of performances from around the country, which it will at long last begin to air next month.

But L.A. will be culturally poorer without Smith and Grice. At a time when KCRW-FM (89.9) has become just another rock station in its musical programming, and KPFK-FM (90.7) has become I don’t know what (both stations that historically had some of the most imaginative classical programming to be found anywhere), Smith and Grice look especially good. And L.A. can hardly afford to lose the kind of cutting edge they represent without losing a little of its innovative soul.