Black Radio: The Soul Sellout

Black radio has an affinity with some twenty million people, and has its possibility for fast dollar. According to the 1972 Broadcast Yearbook, there are 330 radio stations across the United States which devote all or a portion of their air time to black programming. Eds. Note: 1974 Broadcast Yearbook listed 456 radio stations carrying various amounts of black programming.

 Blacks, however, own only twenty-two of these community outlets. This is almost twice the black ownership listed in 1970 an encouraging sign compared to the wasteland of television, where blacks own nothing. November, 1972, of the National Association of broadcasters was devoted to discussion of the myriad difficulties that the face minorities in their attempts and aspirations relative to broadcast ownership.

 White ownership has set a low standard, but must black owners follow the rules and regulation. With pitifully few exceptions they have been cruelly exploitative and as unstinting in their misconceptions as their white brethren. In a ripoff society, black radio stands as a prime illustration.

 The voice of black radio conforms to type wherever one may travel in this nation.
Formula that presumes black Americans are monolithic in taste and viewpoint.

Consists of soul music rhythm and blues to the almost total exclusion of other black musical and dramatic expression. The news usually read with rip n read variety pulled off the ticker and read by a disc jock to the accompaniment of sounds to simulate a newsroom.

 This news is of a quasi-national or regional nature and no more informs the local community about neighborhood happenings than does Walter Cronkite. He was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Evening News for 19 years (196281).

 Ironically, news of the local black community generally goes unreported unless the whiteowned wire services pick it up first and feed it to the reporter less soul station. Since most black stations are unable to compete with major networks and television in depth and detail of news coverage about world events, one can wonder why these outlets have not developed black local news coverage as their own purview.

 An electronic Trojan Horse has been wired into the black community. It is concealed by a thin vaneer of cultural compatibility and amplified shouts of Right on brothers and sisters from personalities whose unabashed huckstering often borders on hysteria. This method of selling often overpriced and sometimes inferior products to black audiences is an insidious maneuver to extract dollars from those very persons who live at or near basic poverty levels.

 The employment patterns of the white-owned black stations.

According a survey on 1970 by Bernard Garnett and the Nashville Race Relations Information Center in which twenty-five major black-oriented stations were polled about black executives on the staff at each facility. There were nineteen full time news directors, three of whom were white, plus one part time news director.

 Six stations had extremely limited news gathering personnel or no news department at all. In most stations the news director had no support staff.

 Black radio, in placing its emphasis on the soul package formula, has misused its position and has obviated any right to be trusted by the black community. What is worse, black radio has become a third rate channel of information. There is virtually n hard information or news or interpretation about political procedure or how legislation passed at the Federal, state, and any city levels affects blacks.
In Dallas, Texas, blacks who owned houses located in a slum area which major business interests coveted were misinformed about their rights by speculators.

 The black communications model is best exemplified in the vital the institution that has the longest existence in the black experience in America, the black church. In the black church the medium is indeed the message and the message is the manner of sermon delivery. During slavery the black church was the principal means of social and political communication through the medium of the church was learned at the same time they learned English.

 The audience power of the black radio in comparison to the nation at large, the chasm between potential and performance is even more deplorable, especially if viewed from a standpoint of politicization.
In 1963 the Center for Research in Marketing estimated that nine out of ten in the potential black audience listened to black stations more than, or to the exclusion of, white radio. In 1970 the rating figures corroborated similar listening patterns among the black audience.

 In 1969 study by C.E. Harper, Inc., which focused on the advertising recall of radio listeners, black-oriented listenership had the highest advertising recall (18.1 percent) of any kind of radio. Advertisers have noted that American blacks, as a totality, control the ninth largest amount of disposable income in the world.

 The broadcast format had little variety and had gained its high ratings through its strong pull on the black audiences. It should be noted here that while most black stations are white owned, white listenership is sparse. Frankie Crocker, a well known black disc jockey, was allowed to introduce what he called the Total Black Experience in Sound. TBEIS brought the dizzying variety of black musical contribution to the fore.

 Not long ago Clay T. Whitehead, director of the White house Office of Telecommunications Policy, proposed blandness and non-criticism of Government institutions. While the thrust was directed mainly against television, it will have deleterious effect on both electronic and print media. It therefore becomes essential that citizens be educated to awareness of their power potential in the form of citizen groups concerned about media.

 In the area broadcasting, such diverse groups as the Office of Communication Center of the United Church, Black Efforts for Soul in Television, and the Citizens Communications Center have been in the vanguard in the effort to protect citizen and community rights. Their continuing campaign to give technical and legal assistance free of charge, and to lobby in behalf of the public interest, combines with the informative literature they publish to bring a warming ray of sun to these times of Administration repression.

 FCC Commissioner Richard E. Wiley has recently proposed deregulation which would eventually remove most, if not all, public service obligation in radio. Legislation presently in Congress is designed to make the process of license renewal easier for the broadcaster and challenges more difficult for citizen groups.

 If the public interest is to be protected, it will be done by an informed and concerned citizenry. Blacks and other minorities, including women, have pioneered in seeking access to the media in programming and employment.