When many college-owned nonprofit stations were dividing programming between news and classical music, Ruth Seymour, KCRW’s general manager from 1978 to 2010, was advocating for adventurous contemporary music. On the talk side, KCRW was the first station outside Chicago to air “This American Life,” the influential Ira Glass-hosted storytelling show. Another renegade program, “Joe Frank: Work in Progress,” featured the titular host producing “radio noir” dramas. Comedic actor Harry Shearer, who started his long-running “Le Show” at KCRW, once described Frank’s style “like a fist coming out of the radio.”
