Open Microphones

Book reviews of the Sears, Roebuck 1897 catalogue, results of a Japanese pingpong tournament and 16 thundering hours of Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung are not normal radio pro gramming. But then, California's non profit Pacifica Foundation, which operates FM radio stations in three U.S.

cities, is plainly not interested in the nor mal listener.

Two weeks ago, KPFA in Berkeley, Calif., brought university students, par ents, police and faculty together for a straightforward confrontation. Los Angeles' KPFK scheduled a documentary of Sunset Strip teeny-boppers and this week will begin broadcasts from an all-black satellite station in Watts. On his morning wake-up show, Larry Josephson of WBAI in New York is likely to tell his listeners that "it's an awful day" and suggest that they "turn me off, for get about work and go back to bed."

With such fare -- and no commercials --Pacifica has attracted almost 40,000 subscribers, who pay up to $24 a year to receive monthly listings of music and in tellectually tuned talk shows.

New Formulas. The nonendowed foundation, begun by Industrialist Lew is Hill in 1949 "to create new formulas for radio," also has its enemies. In 1963, the U.S. Senate Internal Security Sub committee investigated Pacifica for Communist infiltration. In 1964, the FCC dismissed a battery of complaints against Pacifica, including obscenity charges, after Berkeley's KPFA broadcast readings of poems by Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and a frank talk among eight homo sexuals about their problems and attitudes. The latest and most bitter com plaints were raised early this year after a militant Negro guest on Manhattan's WBAI read an anti-Semitic poem on the air; a black militant on another pro gram said that Hitler "didn't make enough lamp shades" out of Jews.

Officials at Pacifica argue that its out raged critics fail to understand either the goals or risks of giving a public forum to anyone with anything to say.

"We have an open microphone in a free-speech station," says Harold Taylor, a Pacifica director and former president of Sarah Lawrence College. "The cure for bigotry is not served by refusing to allow expression of views which we con sider reprehensible."

Pacifica stations often find themselves set upon from all quarters. They get ultraconservative barbs for broadcasting taped speeches by Malcolm X and the views of Radicals Tom Hayden and Jerry Rubin. Broadcasts by Conservative William Buckley and right-wing "Objectivist" Ayn Rand have stirred anguished complaints from offended liberals.

The foundation's penchant for controversy is abetted by a flock of waggish personalities who are refreshingly aloof from the slick chat of commercial radio. KPFK Disk Jockey Lew Merkelson, an ex-truck driver who runs Los Angeles' most knowledgeable classical-music program, often invites local enthusiasts to come in and play their favorite records on the air. Newscasters at Pacifica stations report only top stories; at KPFK, they take pride in the fact that they never even mentioned Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding.

In the Red. The emphasis on quality has paid off. KPFK has won awards for its documentaries on Martin Luther King and the 1965 Watts riot. On all three stations, nearly half the program day is reserved for news and public affairs; music selections range from Bach cantatas in the morning to acid rock after midnight.

Though it has wide popularity, Pacifica is far from prosperous. KPFA ("Your listener-nonsupported station") hopes to raise $75,000 in a "May Day" fund drive. KPFK paid only five of its twelve employees last week. Still, Pacifica officials believe their stations will be able to continue assaulting the airwaves. After considering dozens of listener complaints, the FCC recently upheld Manhattan's WBAI. "The opinions and views of others may startle, shock and even offend," said the FCC. "But the drafters of the Constitution believed that no man has a monopoly on truth."

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