WBAI in the Sky

When Manhattan Chemical Engineer Louis Schweitzer gave away his $200,000 FM station last year, he did so, he said, because it was threatening to become a commercial success. The December 1958 newspaper strike had brought so many advertisers and so much advertiser interference to New York's WBAI that Schweitzer had to scramble for a way to preserve his programing ideal: "Free radio."

Last week WBAI-FM began broadcasting under new ownership--California's Pacifica Foundation--and Donor Schweitzer's ideal was getting a good run for his money. The station's program is crowded with excellent music, also makes room for viewpoints that would make many a network executive's brush cut burst into flame.

Listeners last week heard Sexologist Albert Ellis give highly unconventional advice on marital and premarital relations. Two days running, Marxist Herbert Aptheker had the chance to speak his mind. But sex and sickles were only a small part of WBAI's offering. A fine panel discussion tied up "Payola and Mental Poverty" in broadcasting, a series of two-hour lectures began on "The History of Music," and other shows looked into fields that varied from "The Art of Clyfford Still" to "The Death of a Wombat."

One principal source of material for WBAI is the British Broadcasting Co.'s famed, culture-heavy Third Programme, which rents records of its shows to the foundation for $1 a disk. This week Gilbert and Sullivan fans can hear a BBC D'Oyly Carte broadcast of Patience, and Shakespeareans will hear Stratford-on-Avon's Shakespeare Memorial Theater company do Twelfth Night. Next week WBAI will play a tape, made in Europe last summer at the Bayreuth Festival, of an uncut (close to five hours) performance of Wagner's Die Meistersinger.

No. I Volunteer. Like Pacifica's other two radio stations (San Francisco's ten-year-old KPFA and Los Angeles' six-month-old KPFK), New York's WBAI now operates entirely without commercials, depends on listener contributions to meet its expenses. With a basic subscription of $12, Pacifica has 7,500 contributors in San Francisco; 5,000 have already joined up in Los Angeles. At week's end, after seven days as a noncommercial station, WBAI had 700 subscribers.

The No. 1 subscriber was Louis Schweitzer himself, who was also serving as unsalaried manager. The station could hardly have more fond attention. Schweitzer, one of three brothers in a firm that makes specialty papers (it merged in 1957 with Kimberly-Clark), keeps a G.E. transmitter tube on his desk because he considers it beautiful, has been an active ham operator since 1914.

Cab & Gondola. At 60, Russian-born Louis Schweitzer sits atop a colorful legend, built by spending his money both wisely and well. He married Broadway Actress Lucille Lortel in 1931, gave her off-Broadway's Theater de Lys for a 24th anniversary present ( The Threepenny Opera has been running there since 1955); earlier he had built the White Barn Theater in Westport, Conn. To help himself and his wife get around the city, he bought a Mercedes-Benz 190, had it equipped with a meter and a rooftop light, coughed up another $17,000 for a hackie's license and medallion. Then he hired a driver who ferries the Schweitzers around and spends the rest of his time hacking on his own (he and the boss split the fares fifty-fifty, giving the cabbie 5% more than he would ordinarily get). The driver, whose name was noticed by a Schweitzer employee on her way to work, is also Louis Schweitzer.

In Venice, a gondolier named Bruno is as happy as the New York cabbie; Schweitzer owns his gondola. A Manhattan barber was full of apologies one evening a year ago when his bald client asked to have his fringe trimmed at 6 p.m. The union would not allow the barber to stay that late. Schweitzer now owns the barbershop in the Chrysler Building, where the barber ("He's also my psychiatrist, the only man I tell my troubles to") is now a full operating partner, hence free from union regulations.

Massive, jowly, with an agreeable appearance that could help him pass for Mr. Clean's father, Schweitzer is playfully vain. Asked for his picture, he supplies one of himself at the age of one year (see cut), says: "I was bald then and I'm bald now." His dome will be familiar around WBAI for only one month, and then he will leave the station entirely to Pacifica. "I have to keep a free hand," he said last week, "so I can do new things."

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