Building KPCC’s New Framework

It’s already begun at KPCC-FM (89.3)--those trickles of sound that, taken by themselves, don’t mean much but when taken together constitute a sea change.

National Public Radio’s afternoon magazine show “All Things Considered” is a case in point. Instead of simply rebroadcasting the national satellite feed each afternoon, the station has begun weaving in a few locally reported pieces.

So when Larry Mantle interviewed Police Chief Bernard Parks earlier this month on “AirTalk,” it wasn’t limited to his new morning time slot. Selected bits of the Mantle-Parks discussion were featured within “All Things Considered,” which airs weekdays 3-6:30 p.m.

As Craig Curtis, vice president of programming for Minnesota Public Radio, which began operating KPCC in January, explained: “Inside ‘Morning Edition’ and ‘All Things Considered,’ as KPCC builds a news department, there will be a lot more highly produced, focused L.A. coverage.”

The intention is to localize the station and at the same time make it more competitive in a market that already has two stronger public radio stations in KCRW-FM (89.9) and KUSC-FM (91.5). Top-rated KCRW averages 19,700 listeners per quarter hour, KUSC follows with 16,500, while KPCC’s average audience is significantly less at 8,300.

Curtis is the primary architect of KPCC’s overhaul, which began in March and has received decidedly mixed reviews from many longtime listeners unhappy with the changes. At 45, this Methodist preacher’s son has spent most of his adult life in public radio. When Curtis joined Minnesota Public Radio in 1997, he brought with him a passion for the medium and its potential.

“Radio is the most intimate of all the mass communications media,” he said. “When you’re on the radio, you have the opportunity to facilitate public discourse or to provide something of meaning, whether it be music or entertainment or news. When you hear [talent] do that magical thing that makes you laugh or cry or respond in some visceral way, that’s just absolute gold.”

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Curtis is hoping to strike gold by transforming KPCC into a full-time news and information service, with a block of talk and news shows on weekdays, flowing into a weekend potpourri of informational/entertainment programming, with topics that range from food to computers.

On the news side, the first step in constructing the competitive, in-house staff Curtis envisions began with the recent hiring of Kitty Felde. A well-respected news freelancer for public radio locally and nationally, she now reports three days a week, with her longer features incorporated in KPCC’s airing of “All Things Considered.” Felde, who also serves as the Friday host of “Talk of the City,” will play a major role covering the GOP and Democratic conventions.

Another 10 or so news staffers--including a news director, editors, anchors and reporters--will be added by July 1. The station expects to fill those ranks primarily from the local talent pool. Bill Buzenberg, Minnesota Public Radio’s vice president for news and information, said there are long-term plans for a KPCC reporter in Sacramento. Until then, the station will use Capitol Public Radio, a Sacramento news service.

As Curtis puts it, he has built the house and it is now up to others, including Buzenberg; KPCC general manager Cindy Young; and Mantle, the station’s longtime program director, to fill it. Still Curtis is a close collaborator.

“The hiring will be mostly by Bill, Larry and Cindy,” Curtis said. “My part is to provide judgment on how people sound on the radio. I was a five-day-a-week deejay for many years, and I spent a lot of time working with talent.”

Curtis is also looking for ways to link local and national issues within KPCC’s new format.

“Public radio listeners tend to think about things in a large way, and so they like local stories that have resonance elsewhere. Larry or Linda Othenin-Girard or Kitty Felde on ‘Talk of the City’ can talk about, and have guests talking about, how Los Angeles is dealing with [an issue], and then Juan Williams on ‘Talk of the Nation’ [11 a.m.-1 p.m.] will deal with the larger perspectives. The better public radio stations around the country do this--KQED in San Francisco, WBUR in Boston. . . .”

To underwrite the KPCC changes, another $1.9 million has quietly been allocated as start-up funding, according to Minnesota spokesman Tony Bol. That represents a significant addition to the company’s initial deal with licensee Pasadena City College, under which Minnesota Public Radio agreed to kick in $15.7 million over the next five years to run the station, beginning July 1 with $2 million.

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Minnesota executives believe it will be money well spent if the payoff is a foothold in the L.A. market.

“It gives the company access to the creativity of the city,” Curtis said. “Right now we’re focusing on what we have to do this afternoon but somewhere out there is new program development, programming [for KPCC and the network] that will have national appeal. If we could find some additional talk-show hosts or do something with the entertainment industry--a creative idea we haven’t even imagined . . . I’m not smart enough to do it, but I’m smart enough to see it when it shows up.”

KPCC joins a station group composed of some 30 stations in Minnesota, one in Michigan and another in Idaho. Minnesota Public Radio also produces more than a dozen public radio programs, including Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” “Sound Money,” “Splendid Table” and “St. Paul Sunday.” While Keillor’s show aired on KPCC before the changes, “Money” and “Table” are new to KPCC on the weekend.

The radio network, which began with a single station in 1967, has come under fire in recent years for some of its policies--ranging from swapping subscriber lists with political and advocacy groups to setting up a for-profit merchandising operation, which in 1998 was sold to Dayton-Hudson, the proceeds creating a $110-million endowment fund. The remaining for-profit businesses include three commercial radio stations, a statewide news service, a monthly magazine and a small catalog operation that all report to the parent organization, Minnesota Communications Group.

Its policy with regard to subscriber lists is now in line with the one adopted by the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, according to a spokesman. However, a suit brought against Minnesota Public Radio by the Minnesota attorney general, saying the company is “misleading” listeners on its list-sharing practices, continues.

Will Haddeland, Minnesota Public Radio’s senior vice president for public affairs, called the lawsuit “meaningless” and “frivolous.” A key issue is how the network informs its members about the practice.

Since 1995, using a broker, there were list exchanges with 80 organizations, 230 times, according to Minnesota Public Radio. The attorney general’s office contends that the network allowed “over 100 organizations to use its member information in over 400 transactions.” Members are informed of the list exchanges on an occasional basis, according to Haddeland.

Leslie Sandberg, spokeswoman for Atty. Gen. Mike Hatch in St. Paul, said: “The only thing we wanted MPR to do was to be clear and direct with their listeners on how they were using listeners’ information.”

Asked about these issues, Curtis said: “My job at MPR is a programmer. In this case, I agree with Will [Haddeland] . . . and the position the organization has taken.”

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For Curtis, a career in public radio was not one he expected or planned. A 1976 graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas with a degree in music and music history, his first love was the French horn. After graduation, he played for the Auckland, New Zealand, orchestra. Two years later he and his wife returned to the U.S. and settled in Hutchinson, Kan., her hometown. Their “great adventure” Down Under, he said, was done. Curtis went from playing the French horn to driving construction equipment until he learned the local college was starting up a public radio station, and his course was set.

Curtis’ longest stint, from 1980-1993, was at WUNC-FM, in Chapel Hill, N.C., where he was music director, then program director at the classical/jazz, news and information station. He also built a small but solid news department. Among the reporters Curtis recruited are many who now form National Public Radio’s core team--Adam Hochberg, Dean Olsher and Melinda Penkava.

Later at the Washington, D.C.-based WETA, reporting to Sharon Rockefeller, he was radio program director and involved as well with National Public Radio on a series of audience research projects on diversity and news.

Joe Widoff, WETA’s chief operating officer, said Curtis has “a solid feel for the public radio audience, and those instincts made him a successful programmer here.”

Still, Curtis was intrigued when the Minnesota Public Radio offer arose: “MPR is the largest noncommercial radio company in the country, and I figured, ‘What’s the media world going to be like in 10, 20 years?’ So I steeled myself for winter. . . .”

Widoff believes Curtis will prove a good fit for programming KPCC: “His eclectic knowledge of radio and of cultural affairs will certainly engage listeners and prove an asset to KPCC and the entire Los Angeles radio audience.”