Creative dialogue

It would be hard to find a more idealistic or ambitious program than “Pacific Drift.” Part public radio show, part community fabric, the hope for this one-hour program, which launched Sunday night at 9 on KPCC-FM (89.3), is that it will do more than simply showcase Southern California’s best and brightest minds in art and culture. It will be a hub for them to meet, collaborate and perform together live.

“That’s the eventual goal: using the show to create a community of creative people getting to know each other and interacting through the show,” said “Pacific Drift” creator Ben Adair. “We want to take all these really cool, really smart people and actually bring them to the audience, or bring the audience to them, so it’s ... an actual dialogue.”

Over the course of 20 shows, Adair hopes to begin forming the alliances necessary to see his vision come to life.

In the meantime, he’s striving for the more traditional, if challenging, aim of creating “an hour of really great radio” each week -- one that’s intensely local and subjectively diverse.

Hosted by Adair, who produced the now-defunct program “Savvy Traveler,” and co-produced with former Wall Street Journal reporter Queena Kim, the show is fast-paced testimony to their enthusiasm for all things So Cal.

Following a sort of stream-of-consciousness format, it covers a lot of ground in a single hour -- artistically, geographically and historically. “Pacific Drift’s” debut, for example, floated from a narrated tour of Hollywood Boulevard to an interview with the artist who created a public mosaic at Hollywood and Highland to a segment on one of the real-life musicians whose story is told in the mosaic, and so on.

The format, Adair said, is similar to that of a DJ.

“DJs take all these songs and make one long song out of all of them,” said Adair, a former DJ who, in “Pacific Drift,” uses songs to tie together themes between segments. “What I hope to do with the show is use documentary elements to create one seamless story that goes in and out of narratives.”

Throughout the show, Adair refers listeners to KPCC’s website so they can find out how to get to the places he’s taking them on air.

In the first show, that includes not only Hollywood but Slab City in Niland and desert shacks near Joshua Tree.

“It’s important to me that the show be interactive so people can use this as a way of discovering really, really great things happening in L.A.,” said Adair.

The show is interactive in another way. It concludes with a call for ideas from the public.

The mission

A first step toward dismantling public radio’s reputation as an impenetrable ivory tower, Adair’s show dovetails nicely with the larger mission of Southern California Public Radio, which commissioned “Pacific Drift,” and KPCC, the station that’s become its testing grounds for new programs.

“We want people to feel a level of engagement with this program that they might not feel with a more traditional, non-narrative kind of approach to journalism and to radio programming,” said Bill Davis, SCPR’s president and chief executive.

It’s a “very, very different direction” from much of public radio, Davis said, which has been trending away from localized programs and public participation, except for listening and donating money.

“Another reason for doing this is that we hope to find some really talented people who have not been on our radar screen or the radar screen of any radio station or media organization,” he said. Whether we find the next Sandra Tsing Loh or Garrison Keillor, I don’t know, but getting a creative community built up around the program and engaging with the program and station makes it more likely.”

Davis anticipates it will take some time before “Pacific Drift” finds its groove and its audience, which is why it’s airing in the relatively low-pressure 9 p.m. Sunday time slot.

The environmental program “Living on Earth” is being placed on hold, and “Latino USA” is also being bumped an hour to accommodate the new show.

“I’m targeting the widest possible audience, not necessarily the public radio demographic,” said Adair, who will be celebrating his 33rd birthday tonight. “My idea is that anything I find really interesting I hope other people are going to find really interesting too. The whole point is that there’s so much exciting stuff happening all over Los Angeles. Who wouldn’t be interested?”