Esoterica

Bernice Judis, manager of Manhattan's radio station WNEW, has a publicist's knack for making news with the unusual. She has spiced her programing with such off-beat shows as Jose Ferrer Presents Shakespeare and A Treasury of the Spoken Word, featuring recordings by Bernard Shaw and James Joyce. Last week Manager Judis began a new show called Frankly Esoteric (Sun. 10 p.m.), which she thinks will appeal to no more than 2% of WNEW's listeners. Described as "the last word in avant-garde art," Frankly Esoteric offered such noncommercial items as Gertrude Stein's The Making of Americans and a harp solo by Nicanor Zabaleta.

Promised for future shows: a percussion orchestra from the Juilliard School, Japanese music, folk tales from Indonesia, Ethiopian devotional chants. Of the limited audience likely to be attracted by these rarities, Manager Judis says: "There may be only a few of them, but they use toothpaste, too."

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