Wasn’t Cathy Hughes Suppose to be Saving Black Radio?
In addition, Syndication One, Radio One’s syndication company, announced “The Warren Ballentine Show” and “Keeping It Real With Al Sharpton” would no longer be heard as of today, June 1. WILD was also home to “The Tom Joyner Morning Show.” The station will now offer brokered programming and programs from China Radio International to the Boston community. Final sale of the station has not been announced. A movement to keep Ballentine and Sharpton on the air as was done in Atlanta, has been posted on the WILD’s facebook page.
The city has been without a major terrestrial urban FM station for a number years when Radio One sold off 97.7 FM (once known as WBOT) in 2006. At the time of the sale, 97.7 FM was Classic Soul/Urban AC station WILD-FM, building upon the heritage call letters of WILD-AM.
In a side note: WILD, as many AM stations in the country must do, ends their broadcast day at sunset to make way for 50,000 watt AM stations. In their case they had to make way for WBAL 1090 in Baltimore. It all goes back to 1928. The government issued a system where stations were classified as local, regional, or clear channel stations. The FCC’s intent behind licensing 50,000 watt clear channel stations was to provide reliable radio service to the thousands of Americans who lived in rural areas of the United States at the time. Of course it’s not necessary today, but it still continues as most AM stations must power down at night as well. For years many Major League Baseball teams struck deals with those 50,000 watt stations so that their games would be heard by baseball fans throughout the country at night. However, is it a coincidence that many of those powerhouse AM stations that still exist today feature conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity? Just asking.
