Who’s Driving That Black Radio Slave Ship?
Posted in Blog
In my Southern Slave Voice: 
I’ssa been telling y’all for some quite sometime about those black radio slave ships loading up off the shores of Urban radio stations. Year after year, the ships have been taking some of the world’s best communicators out to sea. One by one they have been picking up just about everybody in black radio. Slowly but surely that boat been coming back, playing that terrible music, dumbing down our children. Problem is that no one has been speaking up and the few left are quiet, scurrying for life jackets, they know the boat is coming but they hoping it at them.
Way back when that “Fly Jock” started, I told you it seemed to good to be true. Tom Joyner, was good but when they started putting him all over the country, I told you something was up. Market after market they replaced hundreds of great jocks with one syndicated voice. They told us syndication was a revenue creator and a necessity to maintain black radio. We all smiled back then, syndication for black folks finally, but we never wondered why it only happened to black music stations. (Still ain’t no black Limbaugh)
Then came Russ Parr, Steve Harvey, Michael Baisden, Ricky (I Smile A lot) Smiley and even Keith Sweat. This syndication thing took over those boats were everywhere picking up morning shows Miami to Portland. Suddenly the local voices were silenced. The voices all sounded the same. The music was all the same. The same issues. While the bark for a select few grew louder, the bite turned into a nibble, causing a disconnect at local radio. It is so bad now that Tom Joyner is on two stations each morning in Chicago and Cleveland. But those ships keep on coming.
A couple of years ago that black radio slave ship docked outside of WPGC-AM, firing the whole staff of the Black Talk format and weeks before that they got rid of the Gospel station. WPGC-AM is a Conservative talker these days. Bot once again nobody noticed, nobody cared.
Just yesterday Michael Saunders the Program Director of Urban WPGC-FM, quickly resigned for a younger,whiter, less experienced programming talent. And that boat I talked about is still docked outside of DC, again. They already picked up the legendary Donnie Simpson, Olivia Fox, Mike Chase, Anji Corley, Alvin John Waples and word is they got a seat saved for that Big Tigger, who they set up knowing damn well he could never replace Donnie Simpson. As soon as they can complete that format change, I know thar Tigger is next.
Well, I got run off now because my jobs to tell you the ship is coming. Just hoping that somebody will find out who is driving that boat. I love black radio and I need it too come back soon.
Shhhhhhh do you hear that boat?
Paul Porter
Industry Ears
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