Kpfk Radio Station

After 17 months in "exile," Roz and Howard Larman are finally returning home Sunday night. Home in this case is public radio station KPFK-FM (90.7), where the husband-and-wife radio team hosted a folk- and roots-oriented music program for more than 30 years. During their long tenure, the Larmans became an institution in the local folk underground as they helped expose music and artists usually ignored by commercial radio.

In their family brawl over control of the left-leaning Pacifica radio network, the combatants have finally crashed through the looking glass, landing in a parallel world that reverses everything they knew before. A week ago at the Los Angeles outlet of the five-station network, KPFK-FM (90.7), general manager Mark Schubb was placed on administrative leave and told not to return.

A year ago, after what they called the "Christmas coup," supporters of the listener-sponsored Pacifica radio network felt they were losing their beloved radical voice to a group trying to sell it, or at least make it mainstream and bland. This year for the holidays, it looks like they're getting it back--though some assembly will be required. An agreement earlier this week settled a trio of lawsuits brought by irate supporters and dissident members of Pacifica's board of directors.

A group of donors picketed the North Hollywood studios of KPFK-FM (90.7) on Thursday and pledged to withhold their usual contributions until the station's parent--the liberal Pacifica Foundation--settles lawsuits with disgruntled listeners and board members.

The Pacifica radio network is the largest noncommercial, nonstate, noncorporate-controlled broadcaster in the United States, and its signals can reach more than one in five American homes. Given this immense reach, Pacifica is valuable not only in terms of its potential to affect public discourse, but also in direct financial terms: The combined worth of its broadcast licenses easily exceeds $300 million.

Free speech has taken on new meaning at Pacifica radio's political talk show "Democracy Now!" with host Amy Goodman suspended this week without pay by her bosses yet continuing to do the show. The program, which airs locally on Pacifica's KPFK-FM (90.7) and examines political, social justice and environmental issues from a far-left perspective weekday mornings, has been in reruns since last week.

Appropriately enough, it was while listening to a show called "Wake-Up Call" that Juan Gonzalez realized what he had to do, that drastic action was necessary. Gonzalez, an award-winning columnist for the New York Daily News, had been co-host of the Pacifica radio morning program "Democracy Now!" since its inception five years ago. Billed as "the exception to the rulers," the show airs locally on Pacifica Foundation station KPFK-FM (90.

For 30 years, Howard and Roz Larman's "FolkScene" radio program on KPFK-FM (90.7) has been a unifying force in Los Angeles' small but dedicated folk music community. "It's our line of communication," explains Elaine Weissman, executive director of the California Traditional Music Society and the head of the annual Solstice Folk Music, Dance and Storytelling Festival in Calabasas. "It's our umbilical cord to the folk community and the larger community."

Two media watchdog groups have called for protests today at 9 a.m. at North Hollywood's KPFK-FM (90.7), as well as four other Pacifica Foundation-owned, listener-supported radio stations nationwide, in response to what they're calling censorship and intimidation of the network's highest-profile journalist. Amy Goodman, award-winning host of "Democracy Now!

Some listeners tuned to 90.7 FM over the weekend got to hear a new kind of classic rock--the eclectic pop programming of "The Cosmic Barrio" on North Hollywood's KPFK meshed with the classical music of Tijuana's XLNC1. The musical fusion was neither intentional nor easy on the ears.