 |
| Picket, Slade, Mtume |
For some listeners, though, this comes at a price: a cutback
in “Open Line,” one of the few black talk shows on a major commercial city
radio station.
“Open Line,” which launched on the late WRKS in 1989 and
several times made the Talkers Magazine “Heavy Hundred” list, is now heard 8-9
a.m., rather than 10 a.m.-noon.
James Mtume, who had cohosted the show with Bob Slade and
Bob Pickett since 1995, announced he was leaving the show on April 21, the same
day listeners learned about the scheduling change.
None of the hosts commented on that change. Mtume said he
was moving on to other projects.
But the change concerned some community groups, who have
criticized commercial radio in general for giving little time to black talk
shows.
Another WRKS Sunday talk show, “The Week In Review,” did not
survive the merger of WBLS and WRKS in April 2012. Activists worried at the time
that with only one adult-targeted major black commercial station left in town,
community voices would go unheard.
WBLS still carries two other talk shows on Sunday: “Imhotep
Gary Byrd,” 7-9 p.m., and “The Rev. Al Sharpton,” 9-10 a.m.
Should've seen it coming after the so called "merger". The African American community better wake up and see that there are emenies among them. Look how much theyve lost since 2008.
ReplyDeleteI now listen to Wbls on Sundays from 8:00am to 10:00am.After those time frames nothing else on To listen to that Baffunery weekdays with Steve Harvey in the mornings is an Insult.Wbls has lost me as a listening audience,except 4 the time frame above.
ReplyDelete