Radio Gentrification

5 April 2004


WLIB Joins Liberal Talk Radio, Drops Black Audience

Air America is the belated effort by the mushy left in America to claim part of the radio spectrum for its own. Largely the reactionary right, e.g., Rush Limbaugh, holds sway in the land of the blabbermouth. However, in New York, the noble experiment took WLIB (1190 AM) away from the black community it had previously served. But was it was just business, as they say in the Godfather films?

WLIB was not making money; on that, everyone involved agrees. However, activists in the black community like Bob Law, claim that that is not because the community wasn't listening. He said in an interview with the New York Daily News that Arbitron, the company that puts out the ratings, doesn't manage to record all the listeners. That means lower ad rates, and that means less revenue. With the top-line low-balled, putting the company in the black with a black community doesn't happen.

Then, along comes Air America with its $20 million that it has raised, and the station owners lease WLIB for 19 hours out of every 24 -- from midnight to 5 am, local programming will continue. Mr. Lee believes that, since the deal is done, Air America ought to "hire a prominent, respected, forceful host from our community." Rapper and activist Chuck D has signed a three-month deal with Air America, possibly meeting that criteria. And if the station is sold, WLBI "should be offered first to buyers from our community," Mr. Lee believes.

Meanwhile, Bob Frederick, the "Spice Man" on WLIB, is moving to WRTN (93.5 FM), for a Caribbean music program called "Island Radio," in what could be the first sign of a break up of the WLIB broadcasting community. As for the five hours that Air America hasn't leased, one can only presume the surviving fraction of a station will face greater financial pressures as this is not prime radio time.

In real estate, the arrival of the white liberals in the less-than-pristine urban neighborhoods is called "gentrification." While their hearts are probably in the right place, the liberals who are gentrifying radio in New York by way of Air America merely prove that progressive politics and business don't readily mix. If a liberal talk radio network is the omelet, WLIB is one of the broken eggs.

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