Singing the News

The 3 p.m. newscast on Pasadena's radio station KRLA led off with the story of the Pope's encyclical on birth control. Then followed the strains of an oboe, flute and English-horn trio that sounded like the walk-in to a commercial jingle--until listeners heard a solemn voice chanting:

Pope Paul VI, fading shadow of the past

Stretching your pallid finger from the Dark Ages. . .

You have no blessed unions to remember,

You have no forgiven sins to repress,

You who are wholly holy are an empty chalice.

Were you ever filled with the sources of life,

Or did you pray them away before puberty,

As you grew in what the ancients thought to be

The image of God?

The ballad was the work of KRLA's "staff poet-singer," Len Chandler, who regularly performs his own tendentious commentary to the most dramatic news of the hour. Chandler's verses are just one of the innovations by the staff of KRLA Station Manager John Barrett, 35, which have given an otherwise ordinary rock station a young audience of more than 1,500,000 and put it in the top three among the 61 stations jamming the metropolitan Los Angeles airwaves.

Assassins Don't Shout. Chandler, a Negro, customarily accompanies himself on the guitar and pretapes other instruments when he needs them. Among the subjects he has hymned in his two months on the air:

> The death of Robert Kennedy:

He was circled with football stars

and other heroes,

A decathlon champion

and astronaut too.

But assassins don't shout now;

They shoot without warning and

the circle is broken

As the bullets fly through.

The death brew keeps on churning

and the hate wheel keeps

on turning.

Circle dance, where will you end?

> The threatened black boycott of the Olympics:

The odds are all against me still

And even when I win

I can't hurdle all the barricades

That keep my brothers in.

Chandler's daily composition--he gets Saturday and Sunday off, barring a major newsbreak--takes him about two hours. Once, on deadline at the time of Helen Keller's death, he wrote a dirge in 15 minutes. "I read the news every morning," he sums up in one ballad, "and I sing the blues every day."

Numbers Game. Among KRLA's other adventurous approaches to the news is a sardonic feature called "Today's Totals." Sample rundown: "Three dead in traffic. One death by gunfire. Dow-Jones industrials down 4.93. The Dodgers now 23 1/2 games out of first place. The Angels 16 games. Those refusing Army induction: six. Marijuana arrests: 20. High today: 82." KRLA's 14-man news staff is youthful (average age: 29) and happily, rarely takes itself very seriously. Once an announcer closed with "This has been KRLA news. For all the news, listen to KNX, KFWB or read a newspaper." Spoofing traffic reporting, KRLA claims to have hired a barrage-balloon pilot who always seems to get lost.

Such youthful pranks and offbeat programming result from a unique management arrangement at KRLA dreamed up in 1964 when the FCC refused to renew the original owner's operating license (because of fraudulent contests and a doctored schedule log). The scheme, as developed by Station Manager Barrett, allowed KRLA staffers to keep on the air under the nominal direction of a board of local civic figures pending FCC decision on a new, permanent licensee. As it worked out, the staffers were given freedom to experiment, and the board got the profits to divvy up among cultural causes in Los Angeles. And the profits are considerable from a gross of about $2,500,000 annually.

The first four years of this arrangement have proved that FCC procrastination (in deciding among the 13 applicants for permanent license) can upon occasion be a positive public service. By now, KRLA's fresh spirit has won so much attention that any licensee would hesitate to silence it.

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