Ruth Seymour, the longtime chief of Santa Monica-based public radio station KCRW has died, station president Jennifer Ferro confirmed to Deadline. She was 88.
Seymour was on the from station 1977 to 2010. In that point she reworked it from a top quality radio outlet run out of a junior highschool classroom to some of the influential NPR stations within the nation produced in a cutting-edge studio at Santa Monica College.
Seymour initially got here on as a guide and have become General Manager in 1978. Her ascension to a administration position roughly coincided with the station shifting to a robust new transmitter, which enormously expanded its attain.
At about the identical time, National Public Radio launched Morning Edition. Seymour determined to make a morning block of the 2-hour present, operating it 3 times 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. The transfer helped KCRW turn into a mainstay in lots of Angelenos’ lives.
“That way nobody was going to have [the programs] when I didn’t have them,” she recalled.
Seymour was presumably most acquainted to listeners from her presence on the station’s on-air pledge drives. In 1995, she propelled the outlet to a then-breathtaking $1 million pledge drive. Those efforts had been important after the passing of Prop 13, which restricted property taxes and compelled KCRW to seek out its personal funding. She held KCRW’s first fund drives and made a take care of the City of Santa Monica to broadcast its City Council conferences in trade for a grant.
“Those actions saved the station financially and allowed it to grow and thrive,” noticed Ferro.
Nationally, Seymour raised the station’s profile and significance by serving to increase funds for NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered in 1985 and for NPR itself in 1991. She additionally was energetic within the effort to simplify licensing preparations across the podcasting of radio stations’ packages.
Friend to poets like Allen Ginsberg and artists like Leonard Cohen, Seymour introduced literary sensibility to KCRW. Under her watch, it aired 10-hour radio dramas like Babbitt and Ulysses. She created Jewish Short Stories From Eastern Europe and Beyond in two audio collections that featured modern actors studying the work of Jewish authors like Sholem Aleichem, Philip Roth and Isaac Bashevis Singer. KCRW bought extra of these collections than the rest in its historical past, in accordance with Ferro.
Each 12 months at Hannukah she hosted Philosophers, Fiddlers and Fools, a vigorous Yiddish music program. She was additionally a someday host of The Poltics of Culture.