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.

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Music lovers everywhere will want to see The Sapphires, a wonderful film about four Australian aboriginal girls who start as a Country music group, transition to Soul, and find fame and fortune entertaining US troops in Vietnam in the late 1960s. Great singing,  charming performances, and based on a true story.

The Sapphires in their Country music phase. [hopscotchfilms.com.au]

Bottom line: “Country radio, despite its special purchase on listeners’ affections, is in danger of becoming a primarily in-car experience like radio listening overall. Country is not immune to radio’s diminishing place on the night table, or in the house altogether.”

As usual, a reader comment on the Edison post puts the dilemma in plainer and more candid terms:

“Seems those who came to Country from shows like American Idol are now outnumbering those who inherited the format or ‘Gone Country’ in the ’90′s. To that end, the Top 40 for White People format seems to be where things are trending and treating it as such is an important part of the equation. I’ve been seeing heritage Country stations becoming more and more vulnerable as they rest on their laurels. Today’s music makes its own emotional connection and I don’t think playing songs that have only special meaning to a shrinking percentage of your audience does justice to the songs that can impact all of your audience. Time marches on and so should we.”

It’s not like Country Music radio has disappeared from the dial. The latest Arbitron listener report (2012) says it commands a 14.1 percent share of all listeners 12 years of age and older. Speaking personally, I like Country Music, but I don’t enjoy listening to it on Country radio stations in the USA, precisely because it is so honed to a white, socially conservative demographic. The streams with country music that I love the most are run by the original country people—indigenous broadcasters, both here in the USA and in Australia.

I particularly recommend Brisbane’s 98.8 FM (“for the best country”), which is part of the National Indigenous Radio Service of Australia. There you can hear Doc Walker and Trisha Yearwood alongside indigenous singers like Andy Alberts and Bobby McLeod. Here in the States we have Greg McVicar’s excellent UnderCurrents music service, distributed by Native Voices One.

I doubt that I am unique in wanting to hear the concept of “country” music more broadly defined and broadly programmed. There is at least one commercial station in the USA that does that—KPIG near Santa Cruz, California. Any others I should know about?

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