TD1_01 Black Stations
LegendarySurfer
Your comments are certainly appreciated...
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... Another assist to AM radio came from the Supreme Court. The
nation's highest judicial authority ruled in 1940 that the FCC could
not refuse a license because the new station might cause "economic
injury to a rival station." During the war, this decision had little
effect, but after the war, it helped increase the number of stations
from 950 to more than 2,000 between 1945 and 1950.
"It may seem odd," wrote Jesse Walker in Rebels On The Air, "that the
same government that did so much to squash FM broadcasting would open
the doors to more competition on the AM dial. But there's no
contradiction here. FM was a potential competitor, not just with
existing AM stations, but with television: [RCA's David] Sarnoff... was
afraid the public wouldn't spend money on both FM sets and TV's. The
boom in AM stations, on the other hand, meant more advertising dollars
for NBC, which RCA [who owned NBC at that time] then reinvested in
television research and development. In the 1950's, as TV swept
America, the company more than recouped its investment."
Despite the growing numbers of AM stations, its listening audience and
profits shrank under the impact of the faster growing medium of
television. In 1945, the three major radio networks sold $134 million
worth of spot advertising. In 1955, they sold only $64. The popular
national magazine Look headlined a declaration in 1949 claiming that
"Radio Is Doomed." The advertising figures for the first half of the
1950's seemed to support that view. However, radio filled a need that
TV could not. It was highly portable and you didn't have to use your
eyes in order to enjoy it.
The increased numbers of AM stations also fostered more specialized
programming. What became termed "Black Radio" - mostly urban AM
stations that broadcast to an African-American audience - emerged at
this time. Their growth would, in turn, foster the rise of "rock 'n'
roll" and eventually freeform programming itself.
The number of AM stations broadcasting to a primarily African American
audience grew from four in 1943 to 260 a decade later. In 1948, WDIA-
AM in Memphis became the first station to air all black-oriented
programs. A year later, WERD-AM in Atlanta became the first black-
owned station to take to the air. Other stations negotiated their
airtime, allowing African-American entrepreneurs to buy time on their
airwaves. In some urban areas, black programming grew so popular that
even stations without African-American DJs adopted fake Negro accents
and delivery while playing rhythm and blues music.
As increasing number of blacks moved from the rural South into cities
in the South and also in the Northeast. Black radio stations became a
means for African American rural migrants to stay connected with each
other and their culture. The new black stations mixed traditional
black music with talk and news of what was happening in the city.
Black radio, wrote Gilbert A. Williams in Legendary Pioneers of Black
Radio, "made the newcomers feel that some of what they had left had
mysteriously reappeared with a familiar sound and nuance."
The black stations not only were links to African-American traditions,
but they were also something new. Black DJ's were the first to turn
down the music and talk over records and the first to use the radio
control board more like musical instruments than mere routers of
programming elements. It was at black stations that the disc jockey
first received his or her credit. Back in the 1930's, when disc
jockeying first began, it had been looked down upon, somewhat, by
network managers and musicians' unions who saw the DJ as a threat.
Consequently, only a handful of independently owned stations employed
DJ's. At black stations in the late 1940's and 1950's, it was a
different story.
DJ'ing became an art form where disc jockeys chose their own records,
used their consoles however they wanted, told jokes and interacted
with the music they played.
Dave Dixon, a freeform disc jockey in the late 1960's and 1970's from
Detroit's WABX-FM, recalls listening to one black DJ who did a show
that was very freeform in nature:
"I recall, as a kid glued to the radio in Detroit around 1955-1956, a
show on WJR-AM. This deejay, Buck Matthews, mixed all kinds of music
together in a pretty unrestricted, freeform way, and instead of using
the familiar stilted announcer approach of the day, he spoke in a very
conversational, laid-back style. He did this on an all-night show,
which, I suppose, was considered by management to be the place to try
something different."
Non-commercial FM radio pioneer Lorenzo Milam recalled that "Some of
my early inspirations were the local AM stations in the south in the
late '40s and early '50s. There were a number of characters I used to
listen to in Florida and Georgia (where I lived). There was Daddy
Rabbit 'with the do-right habit' and Hank the night watchman and Pappy
Schrappy ('makin' you happy'). They were true wits and originals -
storytellers in the best southern tradition... Hank and Daddy Rabbit and
Pappy would tell stories (often lecherous ones) - would skirt the
border between lurid and gross and hilarious, but always within a wit
that made it impossible for those of us listening in to complain.
"We were spying on another culture, weren't we? - for in the
segregated south, we knew nothing of the culture, the art, the
exquisite music of the blacks because we never ventured into that part
of town, what was so easily referred to as 'niggertown.' But we could
eaves-drop by radio."