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News | Smiling in Radioland — KMZT's Saul Levine

March 10, 2004  |  by Victoria Looseleaf

Some career paths are serpentine, taking lots of twists and turns. Not so for Saul Levine, who says he fell in love with radio when he was three years old in Michigan and decided, as a teen, that his life goal was to own and operate a radio station. With a slight detour to practice law (“waiting,” Levine says, “for his FCC permits”), his has been a single-minded — and very successful — calling.

Indeed, Levine remains the driving force behind one of the country’s few commercial classical radio stations, K-Mozart, KMZT-FM (105.1). To celebrate his 45th broadcasting anniversary last month (Levine also owns K-SURF-AM, and has operated stations with country, jazz and rock and roll formats at various times in his career), Levine dipped into his music vaults in order to recreate that initial outing on Mount Wilson in 1959.

“We had a studio and a transmitter, but not a telephone,” he recalls. “Authorization came by telegram. We pulled a stack of records and it happened to be Franz Lehar’s Land of Smiles. That was the first piece we ever played.”

In 1987 the station moved to West Los Angeles, but there are still plenty of smiles in radioland: Levine can count his as the longest-operating, independent radio station in town under original ownership.

“We run it like old-fashioned radio,” says Levine, who lives nearby and goes into work each week day. “I do everything. I’m the manager, I’m active in sales, in engineering. I buy the light bulbs and sweep out the place. My whole life revolves around this.”

Levine, who insists he’ll work when he’s 90 if able, also attends up to 50 classical concerts a year with Anita, his wife of over 30 years. But it’s his unmitigated joy in being able to share his love of classical music with the community — reaching, he says, about 600,000 people weekly — that keeps the mogul charged. This includes broadcasting live concerts.

“We’re the official radio station foramst every main classical musical venue in Southern California. It’s an immediacy,” Levine points out. “It brings the public in touch on a live basis with the music that’s being performed. That’s exciting.”

Among the organizations Levine broadcasts live are the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Orange County’s Pacific Symphony and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, under music director Grant Gershon.

“We were thrilled to broadcast the Chorale’s opening night at Disney Hall,” says Levine of last November’s historic concert. “The association is wonderful - and wonderful to work with. Grant comes into the station in Levis and does announcements and little vignettes. There’s no ego involved.”

Although Levine confesses to being a workaholic, he finds time to spend with his family (two grown children), raise Golden Retrievers (his fifth — Archie), and drink wine, from his own vineyards in Napa and Monterey County. But his heart belongs to radio.

“It’s quite a challenge for a stand-alone mom and pop organization to compete in today’s market, but we’re standing up through hard work, initiative and innovative thinking. It’s such a challenge,” he adds gleefully, “that I enjoy it.”