A connection in Boston’s black community is lost with sale of WILD-FM

By Adrienne P. Samuels
Boston Globe
(August 23, 2006) Dorchester business owner Greg Francis has grown tired of trying to explain to out-of-town friends why black music is so scarce on the local airwaves.

But this week's sale of the Hub's only black-owned FM radio station, 97.7 WILD, will only make matters worse.

“It's a shame because people visit our town and complain about the music," said Francis, 35, owner of a welding company. Like many other WILD -FM fans, he was stunned yesterday, when the station changed formats, eliminating certain talk shows and dropping soul music in favor of hard rock.

“It was so abrupt," Francis said. “I'm disappointed. It's like we don't even exist."

Across the city and suburbs, fans of soul, neo-soul, and classic R&B lamented the $30 million sale of WILD-FM by Radio One to Entercom Communications Corp. The result: by 5:30 pm yesterday, the sultry sound of Luther Vandross was replaced by the guitar licks of Aerosmith.

“The overall effect on the market itself is that there are no black music stations," said Alfredo Fonseca, former marketing director of WILD-FM. “So, I'm missing a station, missing a job, and missing the people. It's gonna be the first time in my lifetime that WILD or even a forum of black voice s and black music won't be around."

On the Internet and on street corners, fans mourned the loss of a station that came on air in 1949. Most missed, said some, will be WILD's “Quiet Storm," a nighttime show featuring the love songs of black crooners, and Saturday morning's “Time Tunnel," which regularly featured songs that comprised the soundtrack of childhood for black adults.

“We're not going to have anything else," said Dre Smith, 39, of Dorchester, talking with neighbors on Ellington Street. “The other stations don't have that back-in-the-day music.There won't be any real black music [here ], just hip-hop on 94.5."

Smith doesn't have plans to switch to Jam'n 94.5 ( WJMN-FM ) , the popular station that plays commercialized hip-hop and rap in a “rhythmic" format. WJMN differs from WILD's heretofore “urban" format , which included hip-hop, but also featured classic R&B and neo-soul.

The radio market in Boston and its surrounding areas is only 6.4 percent black, according to BIA Financial Network, a Virginia company tracking the radio industry. Still, many black Bostonians said the sale will destroy a cultural connection with fellow urbanites from coast to coast.

“There are stations that will continue to play urban and hip-hop, but they are stations not considered to be part of the community," said Kelley Chunn, owner of a multicultural PR firm in Boston. “They may not co sponsor community-based events, and they're certainly not owned by African-Americans."

The black-owned, Washington D.C.-based Radio One has said the AM side of WILD will remain on the air. But the changes at the FM station will have an impact there, too. The Jimmy Myers talk radio show, which is produced locally, will be replaced on WILD-AM by the syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show, which used to run on the FM station prior to the sale.

After Joyner, the AM station will play gospel music, but will not pick up the urban music format that filled the FM station's airwaves. In addition, other syndicated talk shows by the Rev. Al Sharpton and writer Michael Eric Dyson have been booted off WILD-AM, which some WILD staffers say faces an uncertain future as well.

An undercurrent of the discussions about WILD yesterday centered on the value of Radio One, a 25-year-old company that owns 70 urban stations across the country. Owner Cathy Hughes, who did not return calls to the Globe, was pronounced one of America's most powerful black women by Black Enterprise magazine. Yet many WILD fans yesterday questioned the company's commitments.

“Radio One had an innate responsibility and obligation to this community to come to this market with the community, not on top of the community, and they didn't do that," said Janice Graham of Roslindale , the former chair of the National Council of Black Talk Radio.

Listeners were not notified of the changeover, and if they tuned in yesterday or the day before, they heard a countdown of sorts to the new station.

About 20 employees were notified of their job loss by phone on Sunday and were called to a meeting Monday. Many, including sales staff, DJs, promotions people and music mixers, are due to get severance packages.

But “Coach" Willie Maye, WILD sports anchor and morning co-host since 1984, predicted that many would not stay on at WILD-AM because “they already said they're trying to sell it."


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