New York’s Black Media Crisis

By Bob Law -Guest Columnist- | Last updated: Jul 19, 2012 - 8:43:43 PM

As we look at the recent demise of Black-owned Inner-City Broadcasting, the company founded by Percy Sutton, which owned and operated WBLS and WLIB as well as other stations around the country, it is important to understand that Inner-City joins a growing number of independent stand alone Black broadcast companies that are the victims of predatory lending schemes, as well as what has been characterized as a racist policy on the part of the audience ratings company ARBITRON, causing a sharp decline in ad revenue to the point of driving Black radio stations out of business.

In fact, in 2009, then New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo won a landmark case against ARBITRON charging that they knowingly and willfully issued incorrect information about Black listeners, that did, in fact cause the demise of Black radio stations.

Bob Law

In March of this year, the same ratings company agreed to settle a consumer protection lawsuit jointly pursued by the State of California and the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco over their Portable People Meters that are used in a way that discriminates against Black and Hispanic audiences dramatically under counting and again causing sharp declines in advertising rates and revenue for many broadcasters.

Those factors combined with the negative impact of Bill Clinton’s 1996 Telecommunications Act, have resulted in a loss of Black owned radio, as well as much of the radio geared to the Black community, regardless of ownership. As we enter this critical political season, New York City with over two million Blacks, the largest African American population of any US city, is on the verge of having no meaningful Black radio at all.

There is the very real possibility that CBS may be moving it’s WFAN AM to WBLS so that they can compete with ESPN sports which is now on FM at the old KISS 98.7 dial position. In filing a petition to deny the transference of the broadcast license of Inner-City to YMF, we have expressed a concern for the terrible impact of the concentration of media ownership into the hands of an elite group of mega corporations that are moving to exclusively own all of the nation’s media.

Currently Michael Baisden has an on-air petition drive to get him a spot on New York’s new white-owned WBLS. I wish him well. However, it is important to raise the right issue. It is not that Michael is not on WBLS. The real concern is that he and others are no longer on KISS FM. When KISS was replaced with ESPN a sports talk format that is geared to White males, New York lost 24 hours a day of programing that was geared to the Black community. We are consistently losing stations that have the possibility or potential of serving the Black community.

In 1997, The Dubois Bunche Center For Public Policy at Medgar Evers College published a research study on media ownership concentration and the future of Black Radio. That study pointed out that policies favoring the ownership of broadcast stations by people of color are premised upon evidence that such ownership furthers the goal of diversity of viewpoint. They go on to state “that a broadcast industry with representative minority participation will produce more variation and diversity than will one whose ownership is drawn from a single racially and ethnically homogeneous group.”

We turn to the FCC to maximize diversification of programing and to prevent the undue concentration of influence and economic power into the hands of a select few, all of whom are White. Magic Johnson’s interest in YMF is minimal at best.

Part of our concern is that prior to the 1996 telecommunications act, the mega corporation, Clear Channel, owned 40 radio stations. In direct response to that act they now own 1200. They also own Premiere Radio Networks, a syndication company that syndicates 90 radio programs including Rush Limbaugh and Steve Harvey. In addition to owning 1,200 stations, they also provide content for 5,000 radio affiliates.

Our concerns are clear! What steps will the FCC take to assure that the public interest of New York’s Black community is not harmed by the transfer of the broadcast license from the original Inner-City broadcasting to YMF media. And given the Black population of NYC, how is it consistent with the public interest to reduce the number of stations serving the Black community. And finally does the FCC accept the responsibility to protect the public from the clear consequences of the concentration of media in America into the hands of a small elite group.

Beyond the courts and the Federal Communications Commission, the power to secure fairness and justice may rest in the hands of the national Black community who are close to spending $1 trillion dollars annually, as such Black folks must work to establish a new relationship with corporate America, one that requires the corporations to spend and reinvest in Black communities and institutions the way they do in White communities. That in return for the considerable amounts Blacks overspend on their products. Stay tuned.

(Bob Law served as the Vice President of programming at New York’s WWRL radio for 3 years. Prior to that, he was the host of NIGHT TALK, the nation’s first nationally broadcast daily Black call-in show on the National Black Network for two decades. He is currently chairman of the board of the Black Spectrum Theatre in Queens, New York, and has begun a new career in filmmaking. His first film Saying it Loud, a documentary about the power and significance of Black radio, is being well received by audiences around the country.)

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