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"  The music business has changed monumentally in the 26 years during which Anne Litt got her start as a college radio DJ; worked at one of the original indie labels, Mammoth Records; did her time in commercial radio; was music supervisor on Little Miss Sunshine and on TV ads for Apple, Subaru, and Sony; and deejayed the popular weekend morning show at KCRW, L.A.&amp;#039;s groundbreaking independent radio station. But Litt&amp;#039;s commitment to discovering great music has never wavered, and last year she added a new gig, program director of music, to her duties at KCRW. Now she oversees personnel and publicity, budget, and marketing, all while still working closely with the DJs and artists. Going from freelancer to boss was a bit of a culture shock, says Litt, the mother of a five-and-a-half-year-old son. &amp;quot;[But] managing people is like wrangling a bunch of five-year-olds at a playdate. I totally know how to do that! I&amp;#039;m just very one-love about everybody.&amp;quot;  ELLE: I read that a &amp;quot;chance meeting&amp;quot; at a party landed you at KCRW.ANNE LITT:  My entire career is full of chance encounters and lucky breaks. I had just moved to L.A., and my neighbor was Rosanna Arquette. She invited me to her daughter&amp;#039;s birthday party, and I struck up a conversation with Chris Douridas, who was hosting &amp;quot;Morning Becomes Eclectic&amp;quot; on KCRW. I was saying how I had done radio on the East Coast, and that I would love to do it again someday, and he was like, &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t you come and audition?&amp;quot;  ELLE:  How has becoming program director altered your daily existence?AL:  It&amp;#039;s the first time I&amp;#039;ve had a regular job since I worked at Mammoth Records back in the &amp;#039;80s. It&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Oh, I have to go to meetings? Really?&amp;quot;  ELLE:  What&amp;#039;s your office like?AL: We are literally in the basement of Santa Monica College. You don&amp;#039;t want to wear anything nice down there.  ELLE:  And when you&amp;#039;re not subterranean?AL: I&amp;#039;ve always been a rock girl\u2014jeans and motorcycle boots and leather jackets, the uniform that everyone seems to wear when you&amp;#039;re spending your life going to clubs like CBGB in the old days, or Troubadour. But recently I find that I&amp;#039;m called on to do more things in public. And KCRW has a YouTube channel, The Cue, so we&amp;#039;re all on video now. When we interview bands, it&amp;#039;s recorded in HD. As I&amp;#039;ve gotten older, sometimes when I&amp;#039;m getting dressed I&amp;#039;ll say to my husband, &amp;quot;Do I look like Pat Benatar?&amp;quot; I want to make that rock style \u00ADsophisticated and sexy and appropriate for a 40-year-old, not a 22-year-old. I love Rick Owens, and I have some Stella McCartney. Trina Turk is a good friend, and I love her clothes. Very Palm Springs.  ELLE:  Who are some female artists you&amp;#039;ve loved in the past six months?AL: Kimbra, Sharon Van Etten, Erika Wennerstrom of Heartless Bastards\u2014she is an amazing presence. Also, Brittany Howard, the lead singer of Alabama Shakes, is just fierce. What&amp;#039;s great is that if I hear artists I love, I can actually help them. I can play them on the radio, or I can invite them in for a live performance. It&amp;#039;s this amazing ability we have. If I worked for some big commercial radio consortium, I wouldn&amp;#039;t get to choose the music I&amp;#039;m playing.  ELLE:  Which leads to my next question: With the overwhelming availability and scope of digital music, how is radio still relevant?AL: At KCRW we stay relevant by curating an experience that you&amp;#039;re not going to get anywhere else. There&amp;#039;s no com\u00ADputer\u2014it&amp;#039;s not like Pandora, just using algorithms to spit out what you&amp;#039;re most likely to be interested in. We believe that you&amp;#039;re interested in more than just news, or music, or culture, and we want to bring you a hybrid of all three. Though we push the content we&amp;#039;re creating online, we&amp;#039;re human beings, putting out emotions and passions. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/interviews/a14218/anne-litt-on-keeping-radio-relevant-655568/?src=global_footer>