The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 348

FT7W life Without KFAC: The End of an Era in LA. Radio Radio" in trade publications. The Boston-based Tanger has bought stations in Detroit Miami and Philadelphia and programmed them successfully with all-classical formats that are nothing like anything heard in Los Angeles. "It's a contemporary presentation," he said. "High promotion, high visibility, contests, promotions.

It's like a high-energy rock station except that we play only classical music." WNCN's Field said that the New York station has gone a similar route and even has a comedy duo as disc jockeys in the morning. "The other day they did a satirical sketch about Jessie Helms passing judgment on 'Romeo and he said. "The audience loves it." WNCN-FM is now doing better in the ratings than the FM service of New York's other commercial classical station, WQXR. Tanger said he would love to get his hands on a station in Los at night That plan whipped up a protest among KKGO's listeners. "We always felt we had a larger audience than the ratings service gave us credit for," said Saul Levine, founder and general manager of L.A.'s only commercial all-jazz station.

"The volume of letters we got proves that" Levine said that a mix can't help but upset some listeners. "It's going to take a little compromise on the part of both," he said. "It's like our children. They can't get candy all the time but they get their share of it The overriding thing I am saying is that the city is now in a crisis situation, culturally, and that we are going to help relieve that by making time for both formats." It could also help boost his ratings, which have been consistently lower than KFAC's. Levine's plan to mix formats, however, is looked upon with great skepticism by industry observers.

watts of power from Mt Wilson, with an antenna whose top is 2,910 feet above sea level KUSC is licensed to operate with 25 kilowatts from Flint Peak in Glendale with an antenna height of 667 feet Fleischmann also took KUSC's programming to task. "KFAC was becoming more and more interesting. It had begun to treat its audience as rather more intelligent human beings, whereas KUSC was going the other way, towards a soft-core classical sound." KUSC officials, who say their station plays classical music 90 of the time, had said that they plan to introduce other types of music into their format "It's not going to be radically different but we have to recognize that there are music forms that are shaping the interests and ears of the classical audiences of the future," said Wallace Smith, KUSC general manager and president "We have to do things to Bakersfield is among the smaller cities with an all-classical commercial station: KIWI is holding its own in the shadow of Buck Owens. and if you go up against the big station owned by Buck Owens up here, you are in for a dogfight" Duffy said. "When I went on the air with classical I got no resistance from the other stations.

I think they even touted us. 'Bakersfield is now such a big town it has a classical they would say." Duffy found an economical way to operate. Except for a disc jockey who does a weeknight show, all of KIWI's music and announcements are taped by a service in San Francisco that also provides programming to stations in Anchorage and Albuquerque. "We don't run it like a radio station," Duffy said. "We don't have news, weather, sports or time checks.

We just play the music." Commercials are inserted by an automated system. "We don't have any high-priced talent, big record collections or fancy furniture," he said. Duffy reluctantly admitted that KIWI with its low costs, does a bit better than breaking even, but he wanted to stress that the station was not rolling in profits. "I think some people who love cultural things advertise with us because they like to help us out," he said. "They take community pride in the station." Back in the big city, Goldfarb was continuing his office rounds at KFAC.

He pointed out a mural on the outside of the building that depicts KFAC announcers intermingling with composers of the ilk of Bach, Beethoven and Verdi. Goldfarb hoped the new administration would keep the mural But the announcers in the mural are the ones from the post-1986 regime. They were the announcers Goldfarb fired. "When I came to KFAC, we did what we needed to do, and now the people here are doing what they need to do," he said with a smile. "There are people who say it is karmic.

You introduce radical changes and so your karma in turn requires you to be the object of radical changes. Maybe there is something to that" Goldfarb stepped into the studio to see announcer Mary Fain, who had just put on a recording of Handel's Concerto a due cori No. 2. They talked a bit about what they will do when the format changed. Goldfarb said he will likely do some consulting and keep his eye out for a station to buy outside of the major markets.

He doesn't care if it is not classical Fain, who came to KFAC from a classical station in Seattle, said she would like to relax a bit and do some writing. And she said she would like very much to stay in radio in Los Angeles. Goldfarb took on the mock tones of an elocution teacher. "Can you say, 'Guns n' he asked. They both laughed, and Fain shooed him out of the control room as she prepared to introduce a Dvorak string quartet Continued from Page 57 "but for such an incredible amount of money, we thought that it was an offer that deserved consideration." As high as the price was, it was clearly a stick price, and although the new owners, the Dallas-based Evergreen Media said the station would remain classical, industry observers knew that would not last long.

Goldfarb said the new owners did consider keeping the station classical, but the numbers just didn't add up. KFAC's operating profit of $2 million to $3 million a year was far below what was needed to service Evergreen's payments on the debt it took on when it bought the station. "We had enough advertisers," Goldfarb said. "During much of the year our quota of ads was virtually full. We just didn't have the audience in sheer numbers to justify charging the kind of advertising rate we needed.

The bottom line for advertisers is their cost-per-thou-sand listeners." KFAC charges about $250 for a one-minute ad during the morning drive-time period. KPWR-FM, the highest-rated L.A. station, gets about $900 a minute during the same period. "There is no guarantee that the new KFAC format will succeed," said WNCN's Field. "Rock has gotten very competitive.

But with that kind of debt to service, they have to risk it" A couple of months ago, the management quietly circulated word among the staff that a change would be made away from classical "So, it is no shock that it is finally happening," said Goldfarb, who is one of the employees facing joblessness. When word that KFAC planned a change leaked out to the community, the reaction from classical music organizations was sharp. Peter Hemmings, general director of Music Center Opera, noted that KFAC had made the public aware of his organization's productions: "They gave us a lot of free publicity, played our music, interviewed our people and mentioned our work a great deal. We also could advertise on the station and reach our exact target audience." Ernest Fleischmann, managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was angry. "What is at the bottom of this is the crazy leveraged buyout stuff that is going on throughout the radio business," he said.

"People buy stations with no money and then get themselves into such enormous debt that in order to service that debt they have to go for the lowest-common-denominator listener." Fleischmann does not see KUSC-FM, the mostly classical public station, as a good substitute for KFAC. "KFAC has a much clearer, cleaner signal The sound is so much more vivid and goes a lot further," he said. KFAC broadcasts with 43-kilo- Angeles. "We tried to buy KIQQ a number of years ago but were not successful," he said. "Recently we were looking at another deal, but it's now on the back burner." He acknowledges that the prices here are high.

"A company could manage it if it was very well capitalized, had a relatively low debt and a significantly high cash flow. And that is our company." Tanger said his goal is to have classical stations in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. Southern California classical music fans can only wait now, to see if there is a place for their favorite music in the hot some would say overheated commercial radio economy. In the meantime, smaller metropolises that are often considered provincial by the high arts crowd have thriving classical stations. "Those smaller cities might be the only place commercial classical radio can grow, right now," said Maurice Lowenthal, the general manager of a commercial classical station owned by the City of Dallas.

"Anyone in a big city with a big signal is so vulnerable. I think that in a few years many of the big-city classical stations will be no more. But look at what is happening out your way. There is a new station in Bakersfield." Robert Duffy, in radio since 1945, put KIWI-FM on the air in Bakersfield in February. 1986, as a 24-hour, all-classical station.

He had never owned or worked at a classical outlet He didn't have a particular fondness for the music. "Country and Western is the big thing. attract younger audiences to classical music. It used to be that they were introduced to it in the public schools, but that doesn't happen anymore." Smith said that the changes, which would be integrated into the programming gradually, would include playing jazz, film and theater music, lighter classics and even some New Age. KUSC will soon get a boost from KFAC.

KFAC will be urging its listeners to tune in to KUSC, after donating some of its rarest records to the public radio station. KFAC general manager Jim de Castro said he will run $100,000 in advertising over the next month on both his station and KUSC to urge KFAC listeners to switch over. "There will be specially produced spots to get our listening audience to transfer over from our position on the radio dial to theirs," De Castro said. "The spots will say something like, 'You can go find terrific classical music that you love with such a passion at KUSC" KUSC's Smith said the chance to pick up some of KFAC's audience-estimated at 800,000 will be a boon for his station, which has an estimated 318,000 listeners. One local commercial station has announced that it intends, in the wake of the changes at KFAC, to play at least some classical music on a regular basis.

The owner of KKGO-AM and FM, which have been all-jazz since 1960, said he will definitely be programming a jazz and classical mix, although he has backtracked from his original announcement that he might put jazz entirely on the AM, with the FM reserved for classical during the day and evening hours and jazz late "No one has successfully mixed two entirely different formats in commercial radio, as far as I know," said Edith K. Whaley, a vice president at the International Communications Group, one of the major media buying services for advertisers on the West Coast "People tune into a radio station for a certain sound. They want to know what they are getting. It's not like television, where they tune in for a specific program." Several consultants said they believe that if Levine does introduce classical music onto KKGO, he will eventually have to go with an all-classical format at least on his FM outlet to make the move commercially viable. If Levine's plans falter, it's likely that another station will step in to give classical a try.

"I can think of several stations out there that are either not profitable at all or marginally profitable," said broker Stevens. "The owners might try and take them classical KFAC's level of profits might be just fine for a station that does not have to service a big debt" KFAC staffers had harbored hopes that a station might still take over their format at the last minute, offering them new jobs. But after the new management announced that it was giving away the station's library of recordings, it seems less likely that any station will step in to buy the format without getting the library in the bargain. It is possible, that even given the high prices, an outsider could buy a station here and take on the classical format If anyone could do that it is Howard Tanger, who is often referred to as the "King of Classical SUNDAY. AUGUST 27, 1989 93 LOS ANGELES TIMESCALENDAR.