TREND IN RADIO PROGRAMMING : SHRINKING THE NEWS ON THE MUSIC STATIONS

The same day he was fired as KBIG-FM news director, Joel Bellman picked up a prestigious Golden Mike award for a documentary on the late Orson Welles.

It was Bellman’s sixth Golden Mike, given annually for the best work in Southern California broadcasting. It was the fourth time in five years that he was honored for writing and producing the best radio documentary of the year.

But Bellman cleaned out his desk on the afternoon of Jan. 16 because his services were no longer desired.

After a two-year decline in the station’s ratings, KBIG, primarily a music station, decided to change its music format and figured that Bellman’s hard-hitting editorial style did not mesh well with its new, “soft adult contemporary” musical mix, according to KBIG vice president and general manager Kari Johnson Winston.

In a press release publicizing Bellman’s final KBIG documentary--a half-hour investigation into the Pentagon’s development of the stealth bomber that will air at 7 a.m. Sunday--station management simply wrote Bellman’s KBIG epitaph this way: “Following a format change, the station has indefinitely suspended future news projects.”

According to many broadcast professionals, KBIG is not alone. Over the last several years, radio stations both here and around the country have methodically scaled down or eliminated their news operations and staffs. Bellman, 31, is probably just a victim of the times--one of a nearly extinct breed of intensely serious commercial radio journalists.

“It is not something new,” said Robert Sims, news director at all-news KNX-AM (1070). “There has been a shrinking news commitment for some time. News is one element of programming that station managers see as a way to save a few bucks quickly. And they think that cutting back on news won’t hurt them if the primary reason for a listener to tune to that station is music. The only thing that kept those three-minute newscasts on many stations for years was the government requirement.”

In 1981, the Federal Communications Commission relaxed many of its programming requirements, including one that compelled all broadcasting outlets to devote a minimum percentage of air time to news and public-affairs programming.

Free from the government’s interference, budget-trimming station owners began slicing away at their news staff in hopes of raising their profit margin and luring a larger, entertainment-seeking audience. More and more radio programmers have come to see news and music as two distinct, incompatible formats. Many music programmers are now convinced that even a little news is a liability.

“We have shortened our newscasts and we no longer have editorials or documentaries,” said KBIG’s Winston. “But we have kept some elements of our public-affairs programming that are of lighter fare. We are a music station. When listeners come to us, it is for entertainment. They know where they can go if they want news.”

And that has been the FCC’s attitude exactly. With deregulation, listeners will still be able to find news on the radio when they want it. Stations that do news well will thrive. Those that don’t care much about it will simply drop out.

But many who decry what they call the deterioration of radio news disagree.

“It is a contemptuous attitude toward listeners,” said Bellman. “They have decided that listeners are not smart enough or interested enough to care about being informed as long as they are listening to KBIG--because as long as they are listening to KBIG, station management has decided they will not be informed. It is a terrible abdication of broadcast responsibility.”

Bellman blames the FCC for giving the green light to all the worst impulses of the broadcast industry. He believes listeners deserve at least some minimal levels of news, information and intellectual stimulation.

But Sims, whose all-news format is thriving, is not sure the FCC is the culprit. He is sure, however, that the pervasive retreat from news bodes ill for the public.

Listeners of KBIG or any other music station will probably not change their listening habits just because the station cuts its two-minute newscasts in half, Sims said. They will simply be exposed to that much less information.

In light of recent polls that show, for example, that a large percentage of Americans do not know whether the Reagan Administration supports the Nicaraguan contras or the Sandinistas, a reduction of even one minute of news on an all-music station is probably bad news for everyone--especially for young people who listen often exclusively to music-only stations.

“It’s like good nutrition,” Sims said. “Rock ‘n’ roll is great, but it’s pure entertainment. It’s like dessert. News is high protein, nutritious. Everyone needs a balanced diet, but many people, when left to their own devices, will fill up on dessert and skip the meat and potatoes.

“In this age of communication, there is news everywhere. There is an information glut, and still people are not very well-informed. There’s too much dessert on the table. In a slow way it causes young people to stay naive and ill-informed that much longer.”

The Radio-Television News Directors Assn., an organization of nearly 3,000 broadcast journalists whose primary objective is to get the government out of the business of electronic news, regrets that some fine journalists have left.

But the organization doesn’t agree that the public has lost anything. Ernie Schultz, president of the RTNDA, says that with more than 80 radio stations in Los Angeles, a few will continue to cover the news well because they enjoy it and they can make money at it. Several others will do a decent job because news programming enhances their reputations and serves the community.

“So what,” Schultz asked, “if all the rest drop out entirely? How bad would that be for the citizens of L.A.? If stations continue to do the news simply because the FCC says so, if they have no economic reason to do it and no fire in their belly to do it, then all you have is some 60 stations reading headlines from the Associated Press wire. Is that journalism? Is that helping anyone?”

In Los Angeles, at least, to regulate or not to regulate is not the entire story. Sims contends that in such a fragmented market, each station must carve out its own niche. Over the years each niche has become narrower and narrower. There used to be a few formats: classical, rock, jazz, easy listening, talk. Now there are dozens of subdivisions--not just “oldies,” but “classic oldies,” “golden oldies” and “yesterday’s oldies.”

“Each station must have an identity,” Sims said. “So they don’t want to do anything to detract from what they want people to think of them as.” News is one of those things.

The RTNDA insists, however, that that type of thinking will prove catastrophic for most radio stations. Schultz doesn’t believe that the sky is falling on radio news just yet, because he sees this trend of eliminating news already beginning to reverse itself.

(Though news on commercial radio has declined noticeably during the last six years, public radio--particularly National Public Radio with its “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition” news magazines--has blossomed. Substantive radio documentaries are regular fare.)

Schultz says he knows of several FM stations that have cut music and added news because they realize that a news department that cares about its community adds to the station’s visibility within the community. It is simply good for business.

“Radio stations that cut back on news are going to find themselves lost in the shuffle,” Schultz says. “Nobody will be able to tell them from anyone else. They will find that they have simply dropped out of sight--that nobody will care.”

Settling into the general run of L.A. radio is precisely what Joel Bellman believes will happen to KBIG and precisely why he is so disappointed that the station has chosen to compete by eliminating much of what he says was unique about its product.

“I can’t believe the public wants only swill,” Bellman said. “It makes sense for both altruistic and bottom-line commercial reasons to try to stimulate your audience. A good news and public-affairs product is one more reason for listeners to stay with you. That unique voice defines the station’s identity. There’s no identity in using the same music play list as your competitors.”

The voice that KBIG and its listeners have lost will be heard one last time in a radio documentary that chases the mystery of the stealth airplane--a half-hour that includes reports of civilian sightings of a top-secret aircraft the Defense Department won’t yet admit exists.

Bellman says that many local non-commercial stations are stepping in to fill the void left by the departure of commercial radio news. In the meantime, he’s looking for an outlet for his brand of serious radio journalism. He hopes that the growing popularity of these stations will validate his instinct that people want and deserve some serious news content along with their entertainment, and will shame commercial stations back into the news game.