Variety has a wonderful profile of Los Angeles radio pioneer Saul Levine, age 92, who launched his first classical music station KBCA-FM almost 60 years ago. Author Roy Trakin obviously had fun writing the piece:
Like Daniel-Day Lewis in “There Must Be Blood,” Levine bulldozed the land atop Mt. Wilson –which he leased from the U.S. Forest Service for $350 a year — driving the tractor himself. He acquired a transmitter from a defunct Michigan station for $1,500, had an antenna crafted out of a lead pipe, and bartered commercial time on the yet-to-air station for a $300 flag pole so they could broadcast. He even built a makeshift studio on the site itself, where an eccentric Seven-Day Adventist-turned-engineer who literally lived off the land kept the station on for as close to around the clock as humanly possible.
Since then Levine has operated classical, jazz, and even country music stations. I am most familiar with his K-MOZART outlet, available at FM 105.1, via HD, and online. He predicts that terrestrial radio will last another “15 to 20 years.”
“It’s free, it’s local, it’s live,” Levine told Variety, “and it’s the only medium that deals with your community.”
Levine’s Mt. Wilson Broadcasters company is a not infrequent correspondent with the Federal Communications Commission. In this 2017 broadside, he urged the FCC not to accept proposals that would lead to further consolidation on the AM/FM bands, referring specifically to recommendations coming from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).
Levine writes:
“Separate and apart from failing to provide documentation in support of the alleged adverse impact on competition, the NAB filings ignore the multiple ‘downsides’ resulting from group owner consolidation,
1. less diversity of viewpoint ownership (evidenced by substantially fewer radio owners- the 39% decline in radio ownership between 1996 and 2006), which will be further reduced if caps are eliminated, increased or maintained at the existing limits;
2. less meaningful localism (evidenced by out-of-market centrally located studios serving distant designated areas, Appendix III, Mt. Wilson Addendum);
3. less competition between group owners and independent radio owners (evidenced by the decline in radio ownership). While the number of stations remain relatively constant, the number of radio owners consistently is reduced – the ultimate result, less competition, less diversity;
4. additional layoffs resulting from consolidation.”
When not giving the FCC a piece of his mind, Levine has been dating via match.com, according to the Variety article. “There was one I liked, but she turned out to be a little meshugge,” he told Trakin. “She was attractive and intelligent, but she’s converted to Hinduism and wanted me to also. Then I found out she was spiking my meals with herbs. She kept telling me Big Pharma’s killing us, but if it weren’t for Big Pharma, we wouldn’t be here at all.” Whatever is keeping Saul here, it deserves our thanks.
