THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Wednesday, April 19, 1995              TAG: 9504190428
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Column 
SOURCE: Guy Friddell 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   60 lines

PBS STATIONS ACT AS INDEX OF AN AREA'S INTELLIGENCE

When company comes from afar, I ask, ``Do you all have a PBS station?''

``No,'' the visitor says, ``but there's one close by.''

So we let that rest until the visitor asks, at last, ``Do you have one?''

``Three: one TV and two radio.''

It smacks of children perched on a curb on a summer day bragging; but the presence of PBS is an index of a community's intelligence.

The two radio stations are 89.5 (WHRV-FM) and 90.3 (WHRO-FM). They and TV Channel 15 are under the WHRO umbrella. I wonder, do our industry hunters mention that to their prospects? If they don't, they ought to.

One summer, Wolfgang Roth, a German photographer doing a pictorial review of Virginia, made his base in this corner because of his love of classical music and its unending skein here.

The two radio stations are in a fund drive now, aiming to continue until they reach $175,000.

I listen to a heap of programs on 89.5 and one on 90.3, but that one is a wonder: Phyllis Stephenson's witty, informative comment on classical composers.

Often in a gathering, during a crackling discussion of serious music, there'll come a lull, and, to ease people, while suddenly silent, they stare at each other and wonder what is left to say, I fetch up something garbled, ANYTHING, to break the doldrums:

``I've always thought Beethoven was never the same after bunging his knee in that cow pasture near Leipzig. He'd have better stayed home from the picnic.''

Just recently after I'd pulled several grateful people with a rope over a steep conversational slope, a gent shaking my hand, said, ``You know, you're all right. You're not near the dullard I thought you were.''

``I owe it all to Phyllis,'' I said.

Over on 89.5, I look for Car Talk at 10 a.m. Saturday where brothers Ray and Tom Magliozzi, more hilarious than Abbott and Costello, answer people calling about car problems. I'm never the wiser or ever will be about cars, but the laughter lasts. You should try those brothers.

Tired of driving round the neighborhood in a circle for an hour of a Saturday, chased by barking dogs while listening to the radio, I broke down and bought a boom box.

Once on the Saturday Fish Fry, the host of that jazz and blues show played four versions of the same piece sung by Ella Fitzgerald at different stages of her brilliant career. That was a distinctive service.

The listener could trace through the four songs the decline of the overpowering raw talent and the rise through the years of the aging singer's technique, a pitcher delivering sliders, curves and screwballs as the fast ball fades.

Of course, I dote on news, interviews, commentary, crusty Daniel Schorr, apt to admonish a liberal or conservative, becoming with the years ever more independent, tracking truth. by CNB