{"id":44192,"date":"2018-12-29T21:00:43","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T05:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/?p=44192"},"modified":"2018-12-29T21:05:06","modified_gmt":"2018-12-30T05:05:06","slug":"saul-levine-radio-pioneer-still-advocating-for-independent-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/2018\/12\/saul-levine-radio-pioneer-still-advocating-for-independent-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Saul Levine, radio pioneer, still advocating for independent media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hybrid<\/a>Variety has a wonderful profile<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n

Like Daniel-Day Lewis in \u201cThere Must Be Blood,\u201d Levine bulldozed the land atop Mt. Wilson \u2013which he leased from the U.S. Forest Service for $350 a year \u2014 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since then Levine has operated classical, jazz, and even country music stations. I am most familiar with his K-MOZART<\/a>\u00a0outlet, available at FM 105.1, via HD, and online. He predicts that terrestrial radio will last another “15 to 20 years.”<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s free, it\u2019s local, it\u2019s live,” Levine told Variety, “and it\u2019s the only medium that deals with your community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Levine’s Mt. Wilson Broadcasters<\/a> company is a not infrequent correspondent with the Federal Communications Commission. In this 2017 broadside<\/a>, 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).<\/p>\n

Levine writes:<\/p>\n

“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,<\/p>\n

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;<\/p>\n

2. less meaningful localism (evidenced by out-of-market centrally located studios serving distant designated areas, Appendix III, Mt. Wilson Addendum);<\/p>\n

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;<\/p>\n

4. additional layoffs resulting from consolidation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When not giving the FCC a piece of his mind, Levine has been dating via match.com, according to the Variety article.\u00a0\u201cThere was one I liked, but she turned out to be a little\u00a0meshugge<\/em>,\u201d he told Trakin. \u201cShe was attractive and intelligent, but she\u2019s 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\u2019s killing us, but if it weren\u2019t for Big Pharma, we wouldn\u2019t be here at all.\u201d Whatever is keeping Saul here, it deserves our thanks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m glad that Saul Levine, fierce advocate for local radio, is still going strong at age 92.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,685,5731,4012],"tags":[3721,4307,5903],"class_list":["post-44192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classical-radio","category-country-music","category-hybrid-highbrow","category-jazz-radio","tag-hybridhighbrow","tag-hybrid-highbrow","tag-saul-levine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44192"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44204,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44192\/revisions\/44204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiosurvivor.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}