Why No One Talks Back to Cathy Hughes

The empress of black radio is using public airwaves to personally attack her enemies in Congress in the name of black progress. Who's going to put her in check?

Why No One Talks Back to Cathy Hughes
by Natalie Hopkinson

If you’ve tuned in to black radio in the past few months, chances are you’ve heard “Reality Radio,” a series of announcements in which radio pioneer Cathy Hughes asks the black community to fight a new law in Congress that she claims would “murder black-owned radio.”

Her definition of homicide? Performance Rights Act (HR 848), a bill that would require radio stations to pay royalties to artists for playing their music. The potential winners and losers in the bill being considered by Congress has been a source of heated debate. But it clearly would dim the already free-falling profits of Hughes’ company Radio One, the nation’s largest chain of black radio stations.

Now, your average multimillionaire business mogul might respond to a congressional threat by heading directly to K Street to hire the most powerful lobbyist money can buy. But we are talking about Cathy Hughes, BLACK multimillionaire business mogul, someone who has a long track record of using the airwaves to throw her weight around on behalf of the Darker Nation.

Thus Hughes’ calculus for the “Reality Radio” spots goes something like this: I am a black person + my business is under threat = black people are under threat.

“This bill is not in the interest of black people!” Hughes tells the 12 million listeners who tune in to Radio One stations each week, in spots that air as many as a dozen times a day. In one episode, Hughes publicly scolds bill co-sponsor Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston for assuring radio execs that HR 848 would not put them out of business. “She has never worked at, managed nor owned a radio station in her life,” Hughes says. “So how could she possibly know anything about what it takes or doesn’t take to operate a broadcasting facility?”

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

Davey D on the Death of 'Mr. Magic'

MAN: even as I post this, I'm reminded that too few know or remember who Frankie Crocker was, let alone Mr. Magic. Like my memories of Barack going over the top and the Mets winning the 1986 series, I remember hearing Mr. Magic for the first time on the radio.

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Remembering Mr Magic-Hip Hop Loses Its Frankie Crocker
by Davey D and Mark Skillz

Today just getting word that one of our Hip Hop pioneers has passed. As I started writing this we’re still trying to officially confirm, but according to what DJ Premier twitted earlier Mr Magic who was best known as being among the first to have a Hip Hop show on a major radio station has passed. Still trying to process all this, because we’ve lost so many people this year. It was just a week or so ago we were mourning the passing of DJ Roc Raida. For us in the Bay Area we lost a longtime KPFA radio colleague and well known activist Gina Hotta. She passed of a heart attack. What we’re hearing w/ Mr Magic he too passed of a heart attack. He was 55 years old.

If you were around in the late 70s/early 80s then you will clearly understand what Magic meant to Hip Hop. For years he was the pinnacle. When he started out on WHBI, just hearing his show was major. It was a really big deal, because what we were doing in the parks, at rec centers and in our living rooms was insulated. No one else in the world knew what was bubbling up in the Bronx. When Magic got picked up and was added to the line up of commercial station WBLS.. It was major. One of our own had graduated and was on the big stage. Saturday night was what so many of us eagerly looked foward to…Mr Magic with his booming voice gave Hip Hop that importance. He had what they call gravitas. He made you and Hip Hop official. He was a radio announcer not a kid doing college radio. He wasn’t someone shouting into a microphone. He was our Frankie Crocker, who was the legendary DJ and at the time program director for WBLS.

Was just talking to Hip Hop historian and writer Mark Skillz who also grew up on Magic and he noted that Magic laid the ground work for every on air personality that came from the streets and made it to radio. He was always classy even when he was arrogant and he could sure be arrogant at times. He was older than the average listener and fan of rap at that time and could’ve easily been associated with disco or soul music. But he put everything on the line because he really believed in the music. On a couple of occasions he was fired. The most infamous occasion was when he stood up to Frankie Crockerwho as mentioned was a legend in his on right. Crocker wanted to change formats and take rap off the air. Magic stood up to him and refused to change his show and was fired resulting in him returning to his first station WHBI. Skillz added that its important to understand that back then and even recently, people paid to have a show on WHBI. You had to raise money to have a slot on the air.

Magic was important to two different eras of Hip Hop. He was the connection to the pioneering day also known as True School. He was the one that brought us Flash, Mele-Mel, Crash Crew, Sugar Hill, Busy Bee etc. he later became the important gateway to the what we now know as the Golden Era. He was once dubbed Sir Juice as he was the big connection and champion for the Juice Crew. Skill z was sharing memories with Sweet Gee this morning upon hearing the news and was reminded by G that the original Juice Crew was Sal Abbatiello, Sweet Gee, DJ June Bug, Kurtis Blow and Mr Magic aka Sir Juice.Sal who owned the Fever night club brought them all diamond rings. In many ways for long before Diddy, Jay-Z or the Jiggy era came along, Magic and his people personified flashiness within Hip Hop. They were smooth and represented the style of the day.

Read the Full Essay @ Davey D's Hip-Hop Corner

Traveling Music: The Walkman Turns 30

Traveling Music: The Walkman Turns 30
by Mark Anthony Neal

The Sony Walkman turns 30 years-old this month and though it’s no longer on the cutting edge of music listening technology, the revolution it wrought in listening habits continues to have major ramifications, including recent debates about the so-called “death” of Black Radio.

When the SONY Walkman first debuted in 1979, some critics weren’t quite sure how to describe the music player. In their 1980 review of the Walkman, the New York Times highlights the Walkman’s utility for joggers: “The Sony Walkman is a lightweight portable cassette player with headphones that adds a new dimension to jogging. It allows the runner to listen to music, or other taped recordings, without disturbing other joggers.” Clearly they w ere unprepared for the Walkman’s popularity; SONY would sell 50 million Walkman in the first decade of its availability.

The success of the Walkman was tied to an age old human concern—how to take your music with you. Indeed the issue of portability is what fueled innovation throughout the 20th century in relationship popular music listening habits. When the first commercial radio stations began to appear in the United States in the early 1920s, the radio became a integral part of family oriented entertainment, developing hand-in-hand with the development of phonographs and the recording industry. When television began to get a foothold in American households in the late 1940s, it represented a real challenge to radio. The radio industry responded with the development of the first generation of transistor radios in the 1950s. At the time, radios were often bulky space devouring contraptions—not unlike early televisions. What the transistor radio—or pocket radio—represented was a technology whose primary feature was its portability. Not surprisingly the first product that SONY introduced to the United States was a pocket transistor radio.

The explosion of the popular music industry in the mid-1950s with the so-called birth of “Rock ‘n Roll” is virtually unimaginable without the emergence of the transistor radio and the introduction of car radios as standard in American automobiles. Both addressed issues of portability—listening to the sounds of the Flamingos on a starry night—and privacy, as American youth could listen—eavesdrop really—to the burgeoning sounds of Rhythm and Blues and Soul emanating from Black America, without the close scrutiny of parents and other adults. As Motown founder Berry Gordy has remarked on numerous occasions, the production quality of Motown recordings in the 1960s was pitched to how the music might sound on a car or transistor radio.

By the time the SONY Walkman appears in 1979, the issue of portability and personal choice had pushed the development of various musical media, as the phonograph presented obvious limitations. The 8-Track cartridge was but one attempt to address the need for, not only portability, but to increase the amount of music available in one sitting. Even LPs—long playing albums—had to be turned over at some point. The 8-Track gained popularity in the late 1960s and 1970s because it could play in an endless loop. When the technology proved unreliable—there’s many a story about the 8-Track Player that ate your favorite 8-Track cartridge—the compact cassette emerged as the media of choice.

The major appeal of the compact cassette was the ability for users to dub recordings from their own collection creating the first generation of home mix tapes of both recorded music and dubs of on-air radio broadcasts. For example, one of the narratives that explains the growing popularity of rap music in the 1980s was the transport of rap broadcasts from major metropolises to small town America, particularly college towns, via dub recordings on compact cassettes. By the end of the 1980s the cassette had emerged as one of the most popular forms of pre-recorded music and the popularity of the SONY Walkman—and its many derivatives including the Discman, SONY’s first portable compact disc player—was largely the reason for it.

With the introduction of MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 technology (MP3) in the 1990s, and the iPod brand of portable players emerging as the most popular choice, with over 200 million sold since its introduction in 2001, the Walkman has become a relic . But the issue of portability that the Walkman helped to initially solve still has important ramifications as the popularity of MP3 players has challenged the once dominant role of radio as a primary delivery system of music. With individual music lovers literally walking around with a personal archive many have turned off the radio. For parents driving during afternoon drive time in a mini-van full of kids, the “Kiddie” playlist on an MP3 player is a safer option than submitting yourself to the always shifting standards of the local “urban” radio station.

As the issue of portability will always remain, there’s little doubt that we’ll be memorializing the iPod, much the way we pay tribute to the Walkman today.

Mark Anthony Neal on the Michael Eric Dyson Show

from The Michael Eric Dyson Show (WEAA-FM--Baltimore)


The New Black Man:
Mark Anthony Neal’s “Overlooked Genius”

Throughout this month – - Black Music Month - – we’ve been hearing from some of the most influential artists in popular music, jazz, and Gospel.

We’ve heard Lalah Hathaway, Melba Moore, Nancy Wilson, Chuck D., Leela James, Sonny Rollins, CeCe Winans, and Jody Watley….

We’ve also dissected the use of AutoTune technology and talked with the Rev. Jesse Jackson about the reach of Tupac Shakur.

But we’re not done yet.

We haven’t hit on Black Radio for example.

On today’s show, Dyson talks to the New Black Man, which is the online blogging moniker of Mark Anthony Neal.

Professor Neal is also a student, and teacher, of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University.

He wants to talk about one old-school artist in particular this month…. whom he calls “an overlooked genius.” And it’s not me.

Listen @ The Michael Eric Dyson Show

Chatting Up Black Radio, the Music Industry and Facebook with Michael Fordham on Blog Talk Radio

Blog Talk Radio
Michael Fordham's A Measure of Truth

Should Black Radio Die?

Radio One’s “Save Black Radio” Campaign Misses the Mark

by Mark Anthony Neal



On May 13^th, more than 200 protesters gathered outside the Detroit offices of House Judiciary Chairman and longtime Michigan representative John Conyers (and Congressional Black Caucus member), the sponsor of the controversial Performance Rights Act (HR 848). Referred to as the “performance tax,” the bill, if passed, would require that radio stations pay yearly license fees for the right to play music on the air. The protest was sponsored by Radio One, the largest black owned radio company in the country, with over 50 stations in nearly 20 markets and an increasing share of the so-called urban market via the TV-One television network, Giant Magazine and the signature syndicated drive-time program, Tom Joyner Morning Show. Radio One’s “Save Black Radio” campaign responds to fears that the Performance Rights Act will adversely affect already struggling black owned radio stations, but obscures Black Radio’s own failure to live up to its responsibility to the very communities that it is calling on for support.



To be clear the debates about the Performance Rights Act are part of an on-going struggle that pits record companies—specifically the four major global conglomerates, Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony and Universal Music Group—against large radio broadcasters such as Clear Channel, CBS Radio and the aforementioned Radio-One. The bill, which has been pushed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), seeks to reverse (rather tepidly) the long known, though denied practice of “pay for play,” where record companies paid “independent” promoters. Those promoters then offered financial and other incentives to radio stations to support the products of the record labels the promoters were in cahoots with. The practice, which was brilliantly captured in a series of Salon.com essays by Eric Boehlert, came to public light three years ago when then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer forced Universal Music Group into a $12-million settlement in response to claims that the company had engaged in “pay for play” tactics. In this light, the Performance Rights Act is simply payback (reparations, perhaps), with a stream of money going from the radio Stations back to the record companies.



Supporters and detractors of the bill, have been quick to point how its passing or failing will impact artists. Record companies are simply disingenuous when they suggest that artists will benefit from the passing of HR 848, when their own business practices guarantee the average artist less than 10-percent of profits generated from the sale of their recordings and the companies will themselves take part of the proceeds generated from the collection of a “performance tax.” If the RIAA and Record companies were really so concerned with the plight of artist, they would create less exploitive relationships with artists.



The folk at Radio One are quick to put out charts and numbers that suggest how important Black Radio and local airplay are to black artists citing the examples of top-tier acts such as Kanye West and Curtis Jackson. Such examples are meaningless for anyone who has listened to so-called Urban Radio or Radio One over the last decade and been taken aback by the distinct lack of diversity featured on major black radio stations. The dearth of the kinds of local and independent artists that Black Radio had historically been supportive of is striking on contemporary Black Radio, where even those stations that specialize in classic R&B and Soul do so in a way that essentially supports the back catalogues of the major conglomerates. In fact, as industry analyst Cedric Muhammad noted a few years ago, Radio One was notorious for admonishing on-air talent who played music that was not sanctioned by the company, making it difficult for independent artists to get airplay. Understandably, Radio One’s own corporate ambitions were tied to their willingness to play the game on the recording industry’s term and accordingly now that the environment has changed, they are trying to reverse course.



For many, the idea of Black Radio has long been dead as companies like Clear Channel and Emmis (parent company of New York’s famed Hot 97) have effectively mined the field for “authentic” black on-air talent, to give the impression of being “black owned,” while having little to do with the black communities they ostensibly exist to serve. In a highly competitive marketplace, black owned radio stations have had little choice but to try to replicate the successes of the Clear Channels of the nation and in that regard, Radio One has often out “clear channeled” Clear Channel. Even those Radio One partners such as The Tom Joyner Morning Show and The Michael Baisden Show, who were admirable in their roles during the 2008 election season, are problematic in the ways that they privilege national issues over the kinds of vital local concerns that radio stations have historically been critical to. In his important book Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media, Eric Klineberg provides examples of radio conglomerates that didn’t have personnel on the ground at local stations and thus were unable to warn their local listening audiences of impending dangers.



In that smaller radio stations were often the only places where real independent artists could get any airplay (as opposed to those artists who are simply marketed as “independent”), HR 848 will be detrimental to independent artist. As Tony Muhammad recently wrote, “with the economy the way that it is, new up-coming artists and all current lime light artists that bind themselves like slaves to corporations (including the major record labels themselves) will fall just as the economy that they are so dependent on will continue to fall.”



To be sure, the economic impact that the Performance Rights Act will have on Black and Community-based radio stations are real, particularly those without the corporate profile of a Radio-One. As William Barlow and Brian Ward attest to in their respective books, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio and Radio and the Struggles for Civil Rights in the South, Black Radio has been indispensible to the social and political gains of Black Americans. But the advantages that Black Americans gained from their use of the airwaves, was a product of a particular historical moment. New technologies emerge, as do new opportunities, particularly under difficult economic conditions. As such, this is a moment that demands new models (indeed the use of podcasts and on-line programming like that of Bob Davis’s Soul-Patrol Radio points the way) and perhaps “Black Radio” as we know it and as Radio One has represented it, needs to die, in order for Black Radio to survive.

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Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of several books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture and the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities.

Should We Save Black Radio?

Should We Save Black Radio?
byPaul Scott

Funerals are funny things, sometimes. Never mind that the dearly departed cheated on his wife, borrowed a small fortune of unpaid loans from friends and habitually kicked his neighbor's dog, according to the pastor during the eulogy, the man was a saint.

I thought about that scenario when I heard folks mourning over the impending doom of black radio.

Radio One's owner Cathy Hughes was on the Tom Joyner Show this morning begging for a black community bailout of black radio because of a proposed bill by Rep. John Conyers that would make radio stations have to shell out some major dollars to stay on the air. The best part is when she mentioned that Conyers turned on his boom box during a meeting with radio execs, drowning out their whining.

She considered it an an insult. I call it karma.

For years, members of the African American community have begged "urban" radio stations to be more responsive to the needs of the community, especially highly impressionable black youth. Unfortunately, our cries have largely fallen on deaf ears. Seems that profit before people has been the order of the day.

The politicians are selling the proposed legislation, HR Bill 848, (the Performance Tax) as a way to put more money in the pockets of musicians who were forced to work at Mickey Dee's after their short careers were over but the radio folks are saying that it is a conspiracy to not only silence black voices but to prevent us from ever hearing good black music ever again.

Let's be honest. For many of us, black radio died a long time ago. We aren't producing any more Marvin Gayes and Stevie Wonders. What passes today as classic Soul music is Jamie Fox's "Blame it on the Alcohol." It's not that the black community is not full of talented, would be musicians singing and rapping on street corners in every hood but black radio is too busy playing Soulja Boy every five minutes to give aspiring artists a fighting chance.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the strong legacy of black radio stations, as the companies were instrumental in not only giving us the latest hits but giving the community critical, need to know info during the 60's and 70's. Ms. Hughes should be especially honored for her innovative approach to black talk radio with WOL in Washington DC.

But this ain't the early 80's and the days of radio hosts like Petey Green have long been replaced by the Lil Waynes of the world.

I find it very disappointing that while the Right wing media moguls are up in arms over the FCC's new diversity committee that could possibly break their vice grip on the air waves, black folks are concerned about whether or not they can get their hourly Beyonce fix.

As my grim faced college professor once told me when I ecstatically told him that I had scored an internship at the local station that would allow me to gangsta-rize the airwaves back in the late 80's.

"What our people need is information."

In all fairness. There are a few black radio talk shows in major cities and the syndicated guys do devote ten minutes or so every day with serious dialogue but these efforts are quickly negated by mind dulling music and slap stick comedy.

I must admit that when I heard Ms. Hughes' impassioned call to arms, this morning I was caught up in the moment as she, convincingly, warned that the end of black radio would totally devastate the African American community . I was just getting ready to grab my protest sign and bullhorn before reality set in.

If Fox News' top dog, Rupert Murdoch decided to start a new network of stations to target the urban consumer, would our children know the difference? Or would they even care as long as they could still hear T-Payne?

I didn't see too many of our people boycotting BET when it was bought up by Viacom. As long as they played the same gangsta videos and kept Comic View, life went on.

See, the execs are expecting the black community to exhibit a degree of cultural consciousness that has not been cultivated by black radio. You can't just push a button and expect the people who you have dumbed down for the last decade to automatically become Afro-centric scholars.

Just doesn't work that way.

What the radio folks have never realized is that we are all in this together and an enlightened community benefits all its members. If black radio had been fulfilling its duty of raising the consciouness of the African American community no one would have dared to even suggest a bill that would cut off their flow of information or good music.

So, do we fight against HR 848?

Read the Full Article @ No Warning Shots Fired or Industry Ears

An Unreconstructed Negro; Cynthia Fuchs on Petey Green

Watch Your Language
by Cynthia Fuchs

Following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the streets of Washington DC erupted. The scene, fiery and chaotic, similar to other cities across the US at the time, appears in Talk to Me through the eyes of Petey Greene (Don Cheadle). Shocked by the news, he stands outside the WOL-AM office where he’s a DJ and surveys the turmoil. Figures barely discernable run past, papers fly through smoke, windows break across the street, a car blows up. Petey pauses, then heads back inside, where he takes the mic and starts doing what he does best: he starts talking.

It’s a turning point in Kasi Lemmons’ smart, enthralling film. Part biopic, part portrait of an era, it presents an ongoing dilemma—what does it mean to be “black enough” and how does “talk” shape the question and answers?

Read the Full Review @ Popmatters.com

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Also Read Esther Iverem's Straight Talk, No Chaser @ SeeingBlack.com

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Also footage of Petey Green's classic "How to Eat a Watermelon"