Joseph Miller
+ FollowThis is Inner City … But What is the Broadcaster’s Future?
“[T] he market shapes programming to a tremendous extent. Members of minority groups who own licenses might be thought, like other owners, to seek to broadcast programs that will attract and retain audiences, rather than programs that reflect the owner’s tastes and preferences.”
— Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s Dissenting Opinion in Metro Broadcasting Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547 (1990)
“Don’t take away the music. It’s the only thing I’ve got. It’s my piece of the rock.”
— lyrics of Don’t Take Away the Music by Tavares.
When the walls started shaking at the Joint Center’s offices during last week’s earthquake, I was faced with one question: Leave the building or stay inside? Similarly, the seismic transformation of the broadcasting industry brought on by mobile devices, personal computers and digital video recorders has presented new problems for broadcasters.
Black-owned radio stations targeting African American audiences are faced with their own fight-or-flight decision: Can they stay profitable by offering black-only programming? What is the tipping point at which diversifying their programming will begin to alienate their listener base?
Inner City Media Corp.’s creditors last week filed an involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition against the company. Inner City Media Corp. is the holding company of Inner City Broadcasting, one of the nation’s leading black-owned broadcasters and owner of WBLS-FM/WLIB-AM in New York City. Inner City’s creditors claim the company owes some $254 million.
Inner City Broadcasting is rooted in the civil rights movement. The late Percy Sutton, former attorney to Malcolm X and a former Manhattan Borough president, and Clarence Jones, former publisher of The New York Amsterdam News, one of the oldest black-owned newspapers in the United States, founded the company in 1970. WBLS has been home to legendary black radio personalities like Hal Jackson, Frankie Crocker, Wendy Williams and DJ Red Alert. WLIB has changed formats many times over the years, but it, too, has featured notable personalities including Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow, and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
Inner City owns 15 other stations in San Francisco, Columbia, South Carolina, and Jackson, Mississippi.
Inner City’s failure to repay its debt could be attributed to any number of causes, such as poor financial management. But saying that poor financial management is the sole culprit, and leaving it there, does little to address the issue of why Inner City’s stations have failed to generate enough revenue to pay the bills.
Let’s take WBLS as an example.
WBLS has hit a glass ceiling. Barring a complete revamping of its format to include more mainstream content, it appears that WBLS has attained the highest ranking possible with an urban adult contemporary (Urban AC) format in New York.
According to Arbitron, the Urban AC format is the most popular format among African Americans. It features music by artists such as Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly, Earth, Wind & Fire, Marvin Gaye, R. Kelly, Alicia Keys, Eric Benet, Ne-Yo and Usher. The “average quarter hour” (AQH) rating of a radio station is the average percentage of a population being measured listening to a radio station for at least five minutes during a 15-minute period. With a 3.6 percent AQH overall rating, WBLS is the No. 1 station in New York targeting a predominantly black audience. It also ranks No. 8 among all radio stations in the New York metro area. WLIB, WBLS’ sister station, ranks 34th by comparison, with a 0.4 AQH rating.
WBLS’ closest competitor, Emmis Communications’ WRKS-FM (98.7 Kiss FM) is the only other Urban AC station in the market, and it is ranked at a distant No. 16 overall. But Kiss is half of Emmis’ combo, which includes WQHT-FM (Hot 97), an urban station that skews toward the 18-34 demographic with hip-hop and R&B artists. Hot 97 posted a 3.3 percent AQH share in July, placing it at No. 12 in the overall rankings. But with the ratings of Kiss and Hot 97 combined, Emmis is actually pulling a 6.2 percent AQH overall rating, compared to a 4.0 combined rating for Inner City’s WBLS/WLIB combo.
Further, Inner City has been hauled into bankruptcy, while its publically traded counterpart is carrying a similar long-term debt load without repercussions. The $254 million that Inner City owes to Yucaipa Cos. and others does not appear to be that unusual. Not taking into account other liabilities, Inner City’s debt-per-station based on the $254 million alone is $14.9 million. At the end of the second quarter of this year, Emmis held long term debt obligations of $327.2 million. Spread across Emmis’ 22-station portfolio, its debt-per-station is $14.8 million, just $100,000 shy of Inner City’s obligation.
Radio stations change formats all the time. If a particular format is not working, most station owners are generally not averse to abruptly switching formats.
For example, the radio station at 101.9 FM in the New York Metro area, also owned by Emmis, has changed formats four times over the past seven years. In 2004, the station switched from Smooth Jazz (Kenny G, Sade, Yellowjackets, Anita Baker) to an electronic/ambient music format (Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation). It switched back to Smooth Jazz in 2005 and, in 2008, flipped to Rock (Kings of Leon, Pearl Jam, Black Crowes, Blink 182). Finally, on August 12 of this year, the station changed formats (and owners) yet again, switching to an all-news format.
Inner City is no stranger to programming formats targeting non-African American audiences. Among Inner City’s 15 other stations, only six target African Americans. Inner City’s station portfolio also includes progressive talk, rock, classic rock (Allman Brothers, Rolling Stones, The Beatles, the Yardbirds), oldies (Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys, The Supremes, The Four Seasons, and Sam Cooke), Chinese language, Vietnamese language and two sports talk, ESPN Radio affiliates.
But what is often a business-as-usual decision to change formats carries an additional layer of complexity for black-oriented stations. As in the case of WBLS, radio stations targeting a predominantly African American audience are often intimately tied to the very heritage of the communities they serve.
In our communities, having the ability to listen to black music, on radio stations owned by people who look like us, with credible air personalities we can relate to, is often about much more than entertainment. In an era of high unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, disproportionate incarceration rates and widening achievement gaps in education, listening to black-oriented radio has a cathartic effect.
WBLS could change formats, but why should it? Arbitron reports a 0.5 percent increase in the number of African Americans who listen to Adult Contemporary radio stations (Eric Clapton, Whitney Houston, Chicago, and Christopher Cross) since fall of 2009. It also reports an increase in the number of blacks who listen to Pop Contemporary Hits (Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Pink, Black Eyed Peas). But this is far from a death-knell for black radio. Radio stations targeting mainstream audiences have diversified their playlists, but black-oriented radio stations have not.
Those African Americans who listen to both black-oriented stations and mainstream stations are signaling a desire for more diverse content. Their behavior indicates an impulse to seek out contexts that communicate — as Pepper Miller of the Hunter-Miller group describes it — “a universal situation … living parallel to mainstream” rather than isolated in a silo with no mass appeal relevance. This does not require black-oriented stations to change formats completely. But what it does require is learning a lot more about black listeners who are less loyal to Urban AC formats and addressing some of their programming needs.
If Inner City doesn’t do it, someone else will, and it is starting to look more and more like that may very well be the scenario.
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10 Responses to This is Inner City … But What is the Broadcaster’s Future?
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MGPTHOC says:
great article to inspire investigations;
Musically leaning to late 60’s to early 90’s (with a dip into 50’s, Elvis, Fat’s, Jazz, Blues, 40’s Hank Williams, Tennessee Ford, etc) This area has always been a curiosity to watch. As we “progress” – from my view – it seem “black” and “whites” seem to drift further into separatists, not crossing lines as much as once seem to be. Of course we have few of races intermingling, but it seems to be more divided as we go. In the early 80’s where I grew up though “my” school was seemingly segregated – each ‘hanging’ around “their own” (we even had separate proms) we still played each other music and went to classes, sports, etc together without race problems.-
But today with “rap” and it’s – what I view – violent leaning, it’s seems to divided “color”. Even in Christian forms that incorporate it – it turns many off. Of course I guess same could be said of Heavy Metal, which seems to lean more “white,” which I listen to more than even country. Which of course we haven’t had a great “black” since 1970’s Charlie Pride – one of my all time favorites. And few have heard of” Rufe "Tee-Tot" Payne,” who taught “white” King of country, Hank.
Of course the Jamaicans I met thru homeschoolers seem to like country music which theirs is kinda patterned from. So Country went full circle with all incorporated into each other from every sphere of the globe? Yet, today blacks in particular make light of us who enjoy the style. Division of both “sides?” What is the MOST interesting about this? It all ties to the South.
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bob steele says:
Red Alert was never down with wbls, you must be thinking about the late Mr. Magic who did 2 stints with wbls in the decade of the 1980's. What caused inner city to fall into the situation it is in now is simple 20 plus years of musical chair management and a culture of mismanagement in general, the play list "diversity" you talk about wbls did 30 years ago and that is why it garnered the highest ratings of a music radio station in this country, today when you say "diversify" it simply means to stay afloat something that will have you chasing, and always flipping…. in the meantime what you should be saying is "innovation" something that inner city broadcasting was known for courtesy of people like the late frankie crocker. late dorothy brunson and it wasn't a secret during the period those 2 names were onboard at inner city wbls had it's historic years of success. It's not so much that black folk want a "diverse" playlist, what they want is a non fragmented 2 tier playlist that american formatted music radio programed to black listeners have been forced fed for the past 18 years, 1. today's hip hop and r&b 2.classic soul & todays r&b……one thing about today's r&b it's nothing more than a hybrid of today's hiphop. If you have been listening to the 2 tier form of radio programed to black folk for that amount of time of course you would want something different, but you leave out the business culture that exists today in american broadcasting commercial radio it is a culture that operates by the cookie cutter mentality and be it owned by black folk or non black folk when it comes to black radio or black oriented radio, it operates by the cookie cutter mentality no other format of american broadcasting radio has a 2 tier standardized programing set up for a listening audience. Inner city is not the first and won't be the last to have this fate, but I will tell you this, if you delve more into you will see that inner city is in this situation because of themselfes that should be the story here how and why a company born out of the civil rights and black movement of nyc forgot where it came from and is now being taken over.
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Wm_Tucker says:
It's likely that Inner City will be taken over by a private group with Magic Johnson as one of the partners — that's who owns Inner City's debt. That's the short and quick answer to Inner City's future: technically, it will no longer be a 'Black-owned' broadcaster, FWIW. I suspect the new owners will shed properties in the smallest markets first, giving themselves quick cash to reorganize the flagship stations, i.e.; WBLS.
Emmis is probably not a good basis for comparison, as they're similarly in financial dire straits and shedding properties to shore up their books. But they do offer a number of different formats through their various group markets, and 'Black-owned' broadcasters would be wise to likewise diversify their programming beyond targeting predominantly African-American audiences. At least it's one option. Another would be for them to allow each of their stations some operational autonomy so that different revenue models can be attempted.
I believe 'Black-owned' broadcasters and media companies have inadvertently backed themselves into a corner functioning as concession stands for African-Americans. While Af-Ams remain underrepresented in, and underserved by media, the economics of the industry have changed in such a way that expose the limitations of ethno-nationalism.
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I'm really glad to see this happen like another poster on here said inner city was a awfully run company since the 90's no finer example was wlib selling time to air america and ending all the programing that wlib had for the afro carribean and afro american community in new york when air america didn't pay wlib they gave us the praise format that's just what we need joke. All black media owned corps acquiesce today a far cry from the 70's.
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S. W. says:
This article is both interesting and information — I had no idea that Inner City Media Corp was in this financial positition. It really is such a shame that minority owners and diverse content remain scarce in the 21st century era of broadcast. I'm hoping they can come up with a solution in order to keep NYC's WBLS, and other affected radio stations around the country, up and running.
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mike jeffery says:
this is total non sence and offers no information whatsoever except to mainstream a playlist so you can get higher ad buys instead of talking about the unequalness black radio has always had when it comes to the ad houses on madison ave. Black people still fall for snake oil salesmen tricks.
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