Monday, December 31, 2012

Opinion: Detroit Radio Voice Muted

Charlie Langton's WXYT-AM Morning Show To Be Replaced By Sports Radio

Somewhere in the upper reaches of a New York skyscraper, CBS Radio executives decided that what Detroit really needs is an all-sports station packed with syndicated hosts who don't know who's coaching third base for the Tigers, don't care, and are only marginally aware that Comerica Park actually has a third base. 
As of Wednesday, then, WXYT 1270 AM becomes the jock-centric CBS Sports Radio 1270, and Langton's sharp, topical, lively and local morning show officially becomes defunct. 
Charlie Langton, 51, signed off Friday, presiding over a typically feisty last segment that featured a conservative black activist debating a liberal black minister over whether it's hypocritical for black progressives to celebrate Kwanzaa.
Charlie Langton
It didn't matter who was right, or who among the callers stacked on hold woke up that morning thinking Kwanzaa was Kwame Kilpatrick's middle name. What's important was a spirited conversation that spread across dropout rates, teen pregnancy, the ripple effects of unemployment, and assorted other topics of direct importance to the people listening to the station. 
"I enjoyed trying to bring people together from opposite points of view," Langton says. "I don't think we have enough of that in local radio." 
Programmer Director Jim Powers says "clients loved him as well." But orders are orders, and this is an important enough market that CBS wanted a foothold here for its sports network. 
Powers serves as program director for WXYT-FM  97.1, aka the Ticket, the dominant and overwhelmingly local Detroit sports voice. WXYT-AM will now be his direct rival, though with an apparent focus on people who really wish they were watching another round of "SportsCenter" on ESPN.

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