Radio Czar Turns His Antenna to Mideast

Radio syndication czar Norm Pattiz, the epitome of California casual in faded jeans, a leather jacket and a deep tan, leans against a stone wall and gazes out over his hilltop estate. He gestures to the sweeping city skyline, framed by a luminous sunset in hues of yellow, orange and purple.

“Master of all he surveys,” he pronounces, with an infectious self-mocking grin. Pattiz has laughed last, turned personal setback into a lucrative self-styled industry and made millions as a pioneer of syndicated music packaging.

Today, Pattiz, who is chairman of the company he founded, Westwood One, gives a tour of the trappings of his success: the Tudor-style mansion, the “stream” spilling into manicured hillside glens, the tiny cable car for anyone too jaded to stroll the paths and drink in the golden views of Beverly Hills.

And by the way--he reminds you--this was once the principality of another master of the universe, rock baron David Geffen.

So what more can an unpretentious guy who finished first, now 20 years into his third marriage, still desire?

Apparently, the answer is public service, tapping into his expertise in popular music programming.

Pattiz, the first chairman of the Middle East subcommittee of the three-member Broadcasting Board of Governors, is championing a plan to dramatically expand Voice of America broadcasts to the Arab world.

The subcommittee’s plan would recast VOA programming to appeal to a younger Arab audience and counterbalance a growing wave of anti-Americanism in the Middle East.

“A lot of what we want to do,” Pattiz said, “is simply present an accurate view of the United States.”

U.S. officials estimate that 33 million people in the Middle East listen to the radio. But only a small fraction tune in to the VOA’s current Arabic service, which cost $3.5 million this year but relies on such weak shortwave frequencies that “nobody can hear it,” according to Josiah Beeman, the chief of staff of the board.

Beeman predicted that a redesigned service would “make us a major player in the Middle East. You cannot overplay [Pattiz’s] role.”

The plan, whose request for $30 million is pending before Congress, would use natives of each Arab country to broadcast around-the-clock programming tailored to local accents and colloquialisms.

Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, called the proposed overhaul “long overdue” and said it could create a new role for the VOA in the post-Cold War era.

“For far too long, the United States has relied on the military rather than all the other instruments available to us, including the power of communication to enlighten, to create tolerance, to educate the region,” she said.

The proposal means some new political bedfellows for Pattiz, a certified Friend of Bill who gave more than $300,000 to the Democratic Party in the last election cycle and has done some time in the Lincoln Bedroom.

“It doesn’t really matter who’s in office,” Pattiz said. “Our job is to provide an example of a free press in the American tradition.”

Talking Up the Plan in Washington

These days, Pattiz spends a lot of time talking up the proposal in the new Bush Washington, meeting with congressmen, senators, representatives from the National Security Council, and Jewish and Muslim groups.

“If there’s a little old lady standing on the corner who might have some influence, I would do my presentation to her,” he joked.

Pattiz was nominated to the board by President Clinton. He began serving in November and has been recommended by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) for a new three-year term to begin in August.

The radio initiative has cleared its first legislative hurdle, winning House subcommittee approval for $15 million. Its backers hope it eventually will win the rest of the funding from the House and the Senate.

“He sold it to Congress, and jaws dropped open,” said Rep. Howard Berman, (D-Mission Hills). “This is one of those rare cases where one man’s vision has been conveyed so effectively and with such passion and knowledge.”

The Voice of America in Arabic is now a seven-hour-a-day broadcast in a formal Egyptian dialect that is alien to many listeners in a region of tremendous linguistic variation.

In addition to employing native speakers from each country, the new broadcasts would include lively music and popular culture programming.

“You can’t take the NPR approach,” Berman said. “This isn’t just going to be a 24-hour-a-day microphone for intellectuals.”

Vision Inspired by Qatar-Based Channel

A tour of the Pattiz estate has led to a sun-dappled living room, where Pattiz shows off a silvery new gadget: a two-way pager with a computer, a tiny keyboard, e-mail. It tells him that Shaq--that’s Shaquille O’Neal--is coming to dinner.

It has become a cliche to say Californians are quick to adopt new technologies. Pattiz wants to upgrade Arabic VOA broadcasts with some relatively established technologies--AM and FM frequencies, digital satellite TV signals--to make them easier to get and harder to jam.

“That is critically important to protecting our journalistic integrity,” he said.

“If we say something that irritates a particular government in a particular country we serve and they threaten to pull the plug on an FM frequency, listeners can switch to AM or satellite frequency,” he said.

Pattiz said his vision for the service was inspired by Al Jazeera, a revolutionary new 24-hour satellite channel of uncensored news beamed out of Qatar that became the CNN of the West Bank intifada, watched by everyone from Arab sheiks to Bedouin tribesmen.

During a trip to the Middle East in February, Pattiz watched Al Jazeera interview then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and accused international terrorist Osama bin Laden in the same week. Such pluralism is rare in the Arab world, where heavily filtered media air everything from Holocaust denials to anti-American jeremiads.

“Right now, there is so much hate being preached in so many media outlets that a voice of reason is viewed as important to all,” Pattiz said. “There’s a media war going on in the Middle East right now, and the United States is not a participant.”

Pattiz would like to emulate the fearlessness of Al Jazeera, which wades into thorny topics such as polygamy and women’s rights, and invites Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs to debate one another. It even broadcasts meetings of the Israeli parliament.

“We want to be the classic example of a free press in the American tradition,” Pattiz said. “If that is perceived by people in the region as pushing the envelope, it’s time we got in there and started pushing.”

Radio, after all, is something Pattiz knows a bit about.

He loves to tell the story of how, three days before he got married in 1975, he was fired from his $70,000-a-year job as sales manager of KCOP-TV Channel 13 in Los Angeles by the new general manager. The general manager’s little brother got the job.

“My honeymoon, which was longer than I anticipated, was not as much fun as I envisioned,” he recalled dryly.

Pattiz spent several melancholy days on the sofa, contemplating his unemployment to the tune of a 52-hour “Motown weekend” on KGFJ.

It turned out to be one of those setbacks that are a prelude to an excellent life adventure.

Pattiz set up a meeting with the KGFJ station manager the next week. He produced a 24-hour package of programming called “The Sound of Motown,” which would be a prototype for taking syndicated broadcast ventures to the national level.

“I was handed a tremendous opportunity when I was fired from my job,” he said.

Westwood One is now worth $3.5 billion and syndicates everything from radio and television news to sports, traffic reports and talk show personalities.

Pattiz views the VOA Arabic service as a potential prototype, too, for the revision of other outmoded VOA services.

“A lot of people have an image of Voice of America the way it was 40 years ago,” he said. “It has evolved.”

Middle East analyst Kipper thinks the reinvented service could aid the peace process not just through objective reporting, but by giving a voice to writers, poets, teachers and educators with a range of viewpoints.

“It’s developing tolerance and understanding of the point of view of the other, because the Israelis are ghettoized and the Arabs are not living in democracy,” Kipper said.

Opposing points of view, Pattiz said, would not be sensationalized as “controversy for controversy’s sake.”

Back at his estate, Pattiz--who once told Rolling Stone magazine that “there are a lot of things money won’t buy, but if it doesn’t buy you some peace of mind, then you’re spending it on the wrong things”--shows off his perks with a get-a-load-of-this air, as if there were still some novelty to the whole thing.

“I got rich 16 years ago, and by L.A. standards, I’m old money,” Pattiz said. “There aren’t very many places on the face of the earth you can still do that.”

‘I Feel I Can Make a Contribution’

Pattiz points out the relative modesty of his house compared to newer places nearby: an arms race of monster mansions festooned with rows of fussy columns and adornments of an unknown architectural genre that seems to have been inspired by wedding cakes.

But these days, Pattiz is more into talking about his latest trip to the Middle East.

Perhaps he has discovered the ultimate perk: a hand in international affairs.

This ringside seat to history “takes advantage of the expertise I have in my own industry,” he said. “I feel I can make a contribution in moving these broadcasting services into the 21st century.”

And on a broader level, “this is about giving back,” Pattiz said, reflecting: “I guess that would make gratitude my higher power.”