L-A Radio: Black Personalities Make Time To Listen

KRRL-FM Morning Host Big Boy

When radio personality Kurt “Big Boy” Alexander first watched the video of George Floyd’s killing, the host of the popular “Big Boy’s Neighborhood” morning show on hip-hop station Real 92.3 (KRRL-FM) could pinpoint the moment he knew his next day’s show would be different.

“Once they took his lifeless body and put it on a stretcher,” he recalled late last week, “I knew immediately that whatever I had scheduled for the next show was thrown out the window. It was going to be totally erased.” Sensing a tense weekend, the station interrupted Saturday programming and Big Boy, 50, went live to take calls.

On the other end of the dial on rival Power 106 (KPWR-FM), morning show host Nick Cannon, 39, watched enough of Floyd’s “public lynching,” as he called it, and spoke about it on that Friday’s show. But behind the scenes, he was plotting.

KPWR-FM's Nick Cannon

“I wanted to be on the front lines, ground zero, in Minneapolis,” Cannon said earlier this week, so he boarded a plane. By the time he got on the air Monday morning, the scene on the ground in Minneapolis was tense. Images of law enforcement violence against protesters spread across social media.

The L-A Times reports since that fateful Memorial Day, Cannon, Big Boy, KDAY’s Cece & Romeo, KJLH’s Dominique DiPrima and other Black voices on the FM dial have responded with a kind of communal outrage, in the process reconfirming the platform’s role in the L.A. media landscape. In a culture balkanized by social media, cable news, streaming services and podcasts, terrestrial radio has stepped up in its role as a local forum.

Black radio on-air personalities have grilled guests, discussed racism and police violence, frustrations and solutions. Illustrating the power of the medium, they have broadcast interviews with leaders including Mayor Eric Garcetti, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Sen. Kamala Harris. On stations including Power 106, KDAY 93.5 and Cali 93.9, programmers increased rotation on what it described as “music that had more conscious messages.” More important, programming blocks have been given over to listeners so they can vent and share.

You can talk to people a million miles away, but here you’re talking to people rolling down Main Street or Crenshaw and they’re hearing about their neighborhood and their councilpersons in real time,” says historian and curator Daniel Walker of USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture and a professor at El Camino College. “Terrestrial radio is making these things very real for people, and continuing that tradition, especially for African American-centered or African American-owned stations.”

He added, “Being able to channel that energy and to listen and to respond — those notions are so different than somebody getting 8,000 comments next to a tweet. You’re being heard because, during that time period, you’re the singular voice.”

Historian Walker was listening. “For a person from a totally different generation than the young people who are his primary listeners, Big Boy is really speaking to the people you see in the protests, part of that multicultural, diverse swath of America.” Walker adds, “he has that ability to speak to Latinos, Asian Americans, whites, in this kind of California flow that we have.”

That’s one reason why Real 92.3 FM owner iHeartMedia hired Big Boy away from Power 106 in 2015, Walker said. It also proves how much value the stations place on its morning talent. His move prompted a lawsuit by Power 106’s then-owner Emmis Communcations. Big Boy’s contract with iHeartMedia is reportedly worth more than $3.5 million annually.

For his part, Cannon, who just celebrated his first anniversary as Power 106’s morning host — a slot occupied until 2015 by Big Boy —has continually opened the phone lines and invited listeners “to protest live on air.” He’s talked with policemen and their spouses, disenfranchised voters, incarcerated men. During an interview with Gov. Gavin Newsom, Cannon, who recently earned a criminology degree from Howard University, said he had “lost all faith and hope in law enforcement.” In response, Newsom acknowledged the legitimacy of Cannon’s cynicism and pledged to do better.