In 1973, 21 reporters from three Black-oriented radio stations provided African Americans in
Washington, DC a daily diet of news - hard, factual information vital to the material and
political fortunes of the local community. The three stations - WOL-AM, WOOK-AM and WHUR-FM -
their news staffs as fiercely competitive as their disc jockeys, vied for domination of the
Black Washington market. Community activists and institutions demanded, expected, and
received intense and sustained coverage of the fullest range of their activities.
On the streets and at press conferences, Black radio journalists jostled with white and
African American reporters from "general market" radio stations, to form a local press corps
that competed for the Black public's attention and respect. Movements sprouted, thrived - or
self-destructed - in a marketplace of contentious community and media voices. Black radio
news had been called forth by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the previous
decade. The news staffs at WOL (five reporters), WOOK (four-person news staff) and WHUR (12
reporters and producers) were local radio's answer to Black people's demands.
In scores of large, medium and even small cities across the nation, the early to
mid-Seventies saw a flowering of Black radio news, a response to the voices of an awakened
people. Black ownership had relatively little to do with the phenomenon. According to the
National Association of Black-owned Broadcasters (NABOB), there were only 30 African-American
owned broadcast facilities in the United States in 1976. Today, NABOB boasts 220 member
stations - and local Black radio news is near extinction.
THE GUILTY PARTIES
With some notable exceptions, Black owners are as culpable as white corporations in the
demise of Black radio news. In Washington, DC, the culprit is obvious.
Black-oriented radio journalism in the nation's capitol has plummeted from 21 reporters at
three stations, 30 years ago, to four reporters at two stations, today. WPGC-FM
(Infinity-Viacom) fields one reporter, and Howard University's commercially operated WHUR-FM
employs three. Black Washington's dominant radio influence is Radio One, the 66-station chain
founded by Cathy Liggins Hughes, valued at $2 billion. Hughes employs not a single newsperson
at her four Washington stations - a corporate policy reflected in most of the 22 cities in
which Radio One operates. The chain is the dominant influence in at least 13 of these
markets. (Radio One also programs 5 channels of XM Satellite Radio, and has launched a
Black-oriented television venture with Comcast, the cable giant.)
While 1,200-station Clear Channel deserves every lash of the whip as the Great Homogenizer of
American radio, the chain operates only 49 stations programmed to Blacks, and is dominant in
no large African American market. The Queen of Black broadcasting is Radio One, and her
dictum is, Let Them Eat Talk.
Radio One's operations are roughly as devoid of news as Clear Channel's Black-programmed
stations. That certainly is the case in Detroit, where the two chains dominate the Black
airwaves: Clear Channel owns two stations, WJLB-FM (urban contemporary) and WMXD-FM (urban
adult contemporary), while Radio One operates WDTJ-FM ("mainstream" urban), WDMK-FM (urban
adult contemporary) and WCHB-AM (talk-gospel). At all five stations, it's the same story: no
news.
Executives at both Clear Channel and Radio One used nearly identical language to inform that
morning radio personalities - people we used to call disc jockeys - are responsible for
"doing the news," which consists of items that were once called "public service
announcements" back in the days when reporters did real news. Black Detroit has been turned
into a news wasteland through the combined operations of Clear Channel and Radio One.
In Augusta, Georgia, Clear Channel is a very junior partner to Radio One in the
news-eradication business. The Black chain owns five outlets to Clear Channel's single Black
station. Clear Channel admits to having no local news department at any of its Augusta
properties. Radio One's Augusta promotions person says the chain fulfills its news
obligations by re-broadcasting the audio of a local television station's newscasts.
In 1970, a two-person news operation at James Brown's Augusta radio station played a central
role in bringing the city into the post-Jim Crow era. Under the slogan/logo "Truth and Soul,"
WRDW-AM News provided crucial coverage of the movement to integrate the downtown retail
workforce, a campaign that led to general transformations in local race relations. Today,
Radio One's near-monopoly has created a profitable, one-stop advertising shop for every
merchant with something to sell to Black Augusta. In return, Radio One gives its audience
music, talk, and regurgitated television news. Black Augustans can now choose between six
stations, rather than the two Black formats available three decades ago. But they will get no
local Black news. In that, Black Augusta is in the same boat as their brothers and sisters in
similarly sized Macon, 150 miles to the West, where Clear Channel owns four Black stations
with no local news programming.
African Americans in Augusta and Macon, Georgia can thank Radio One and Clear Channel,
equally, for withholding local news, without which community organizing is just a bunch of
"talk." Black Detroit has access to many more radio signals than 30 years ago, but hears far
less information that is politically useful. The once proud Black radio press corps of
Washington, DC is now shriveled to four people at two stations, while the corporate,
four-station Radio One powerhouse dispenses cheap talk and jive. It is scandalous that
Viacom, with one newsperson, serves Black Washington better than the nation's richest Black
radio chain.
NO NEWS IS BAD NEWS
We have provided these snapshots of the state of Black radio news to illustrate a larger
picture. As the FCC under Colin Powell's totally corrupted son, Michael, conspires to
complete the mega-consolidation of the nation's airwaves - possibly this Monday - Black
America surveys a broadcast landscape in which serious political struggle has already become
problematic, if not impossible. As with all things in America, the Black road to consolidated
media mush has been different from that of white America: Blacks supported the business
ventures of many of the very people who now electronically starve and abuse them.
African Americans were caught between two valid sets of demands - Black community access to
the airwaves, and Black ownership of broadcast properties. With the enthusiastic support of
the entire Black body politic, the entrepreneurs won great victories, increasing their
properties seven-fold in the space of a generation, and their net worths by far more than
that. They were empowered to join the game of consolidation that began in the Eighties and
reached fever pitch after passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Radio One emerged as
the pre-eminent Black market presence, with stations in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston,
Charlotte, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Dayton, Houston, Indianapolis, Los
Angeles, Louisville, Miami, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Raleigh-Durham, Richmond, St. Louis,
as well as Washington, DC, Detroit, and Augusta.
In the process, Black "stand-alone" stations, typically operated by businesspeople with
longstanding roots in the community, have been forced out - or have cashed out. News has most
often been jettisoned in favor of "talk" - the seductive format that ranges from quality
syndications that do have value to a national audience but provide little to sustain local
struggles, to vapid, "barber shop"-type offerings, eclectic blocks of time filled with
chatter, signifying nothing.
DUMBING DOWN BLACK PEOPLE
There need not have been a contradiction between Black ownership and community access,
including the maintenance of quality news operations. In a betrayal that, we believe, has
been a major factor in the relentless decline of Black political power, many Black radio
owners have adopted business plans identical to their white corporate peers.
Such is certainly the case with Radio One. "The company's voraciousness mirrored the
consolidation throughout the radio industry after rules limiting the number of stations one
company could own nationally were lifted in 1996," wrote the Washington Post, in a February
5, 2003 showcase article. Radio One boasts a 60-person research department that "randomly
calls thousands of people and conducts 20-minute surveys of those who tune in to its radio
stations." Do the people want news? The subject isn't broached by either Post reporter
Krissah Williams or her main interlocutor, Radio One Chief Operating Officer Mary Catherine
Sneed. Instead, the conversation is all about the sales value of entertainment programming.
"If you're not [at parties, clubs and grass-roots events], you'll never be a big personality
in the community," Sneed said. "Those are the things that separate stations from one
another."
News isn't even on the radar screen. Indeed, so insidiously have disc jockey patter and the
talk show format been substituted for news that large segments of the Black public may no
longer know the difference.
James E. Clingman is a serious man, an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati's
African-American Studies department, former editor of the Cincinnati Herald Newspaper, and a
founder of the Greater Cincinnati African American Chamber of Commerce. Yet Professor
Clingman, who is also a veteran talk show host, manages to write a lengthy commentary on
Black radio without once mentioning the dearth of local Black news.
"As far as Black talk radio is concerned, we do get a variety of opinions," said Clingman in
a piece posted on BlackPressUSA.com. "But unlike the rallying cries I hear on those other'
[white] stations, calls to action against events or persons that rub the host the wrong way,
or calls for collective political action against an 'enemy,' much of our Black radio talk is
just talk - without action. I don't mean to use a broad brush with that statement; I only
want to sound the alarm." Clingman continues, "Airtime is precious, and the capability of
speaking to thousands of our people via a Black talk radio program should, at every
opportunity, call for and move our people to responsive action."
Professor Clingman seems not to realize that Black talk radio is uninformed radio,
conversations not grounded in a steady stream of information of the kind that can only be
provided by Black news operations. Thirty years ago, Black talk shows were forums to discuss
the news that listeners learned about largely through the efforts of the stations' own
journalists. In many cases, radio reporters hosted these shows, turning them into larger
windows on the political ferment within and beyond the community. Today, much of Black talk
radio operates in an informational vacuum, simulating activism through the ritual flapping of
lips.
Professor Clingman clings to the notion that Black ownership will provide salvation, and
worries that "The next round of deregulation could mean an even further decline in Black
ownership of radio outlets and, more importantly, a decline in Black talk radio." His
priorities are misplaced. As we have learned to our despair and horror, Black ownership
guarantees nothing and, in the case of Radio One, ensures that entertainment, disc jockey
chatter and syndication become standard fare. Most importantly, the absence of news
operations at Black radio stations results in atrophy of existing Black political groupings
and the stillbirth of new organizations. Talk shows do not empower communities, vibrant
grassroots organizations do. And these organizations can only flourish when their activities
are given proper coverage in the media that their constituencies listen to - Black radio.
MISPLACED LOYALTIES
African Americans applauded the media acquisitions of "our" entrepreneurs, trusting that the
community at large would benefit. Instead, many owners moved quickly to become corporate
citizens, first, last and always - or until the next crisis threatens their holdings.
It is impossible to measure what Black America has lost through misplaced loyalty to owners
who themselves feel no such sentiment. Many of the gains made by African Americans during the
heyday of Black radio cannot be duplicated today, due to the duplicity of those entrepreneurs
who cashed in the people's collective chips for their own benefit.
A Chicagoan who was part of the small group of activists that laid the groundwork for Harold
Washington's successful 1983 mayoral campaign remembers how critical Black radio was to the
process. "Back in those days, the first thing we would do was print out the leaflets. The
next was to call Black radio to get coverage," he says. "If we were going to mount a campaign
to elect a Harold Washington Mayor of Chicago, today, I don't know if we could pull it off,"
given the current state of Black radio.
In our May 1 commentary, "Treat Corporate Media Like the Enemy," we wrote:
The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements were mass activities whose fortunes were closely
tied to the behavior of mass media. The frenzy of Black newsroom hiring three decades ago
occurred in response to Black activism. African Americans demanded that media provide
coverage of Black struggles, or be considered "part of the problem." The FCC and corporate
media temporarily accommodated these demands, allowing a brief expansion of the social space
in which the Black political drama was acted out. That door is now virtually closed, and will
remain so, no matter how the FCC rules in June, unless Black organizations retool their
strategies to force a media response.
African American radio audiences are the most loyal demographic in the nation, far more
likely to listen to Black radio than Hispanics are to patronize Spanish-language outlets, and
much less segmented than the white population. Consequently, Black radio is extremely
profitable. For much the same reason, the near-extinction of local Black radio news has
crippled Black community organizing. One can only imagine the kind of city Washington, DC
might have become had Black radio news kept pace with the doubling of Black-formatted
outlets. Rather than dwindling to four radio reporters from 21 in 1973, 30 or more electronic
journalists might be covering community concerns for Black-oriented stations, cultivating an
organized and aware population in the process.
A healthy, three- or four-person local newsroom can be staffed for considerably less than
$200,000 per year. Radio One dominates the Washington market, and must bear a large measure
of responsibility for the disempowerment of the Black people of the city and region. It is
the job of serious activists to make the price of a no-news radio regime higher than the cost
of a newsroom, through direct action against the offending outlets and their advertisers.