RBR+TVBR INFOCUS
To many outsiders, Chadbourn, N.C., may be just another small Southern town, population 1,856. It’s known primarily as the home of the NC Strawberry Festival.
People here earn a modest wage; the population is 54% African American and 42% Caucasian.
That’s key to understanding why the fate of a Class D daytime-only AM radio station with 1kw from 1 tower has captured the attention of local TV news crews. The facility is in decline and could shutter.
It just happens to be the first radio station to be owned and operated by an African American east of the Mississippi River.
On April 24, 1962, as “The Voice of Ebony,” Willie J. Walls signed on WVOE-AM 1590.
In doing so, he presaged such giants of African American broadcasting as Cathy Hughes in taking ownership of an AM radio station before few others did.
In fact, Walls was the first owner of a “W”-prefixed radio station of Black heritage and race; Egmont Sonderling didn’t establish a Rhythm & Blues format at WWRL-AM 1600 in New York until the Beatles Invasion of January 1964, and didn’t acquire WOL-AM 1450 in Washington, D.C., until 1965.
Walls, now 92, has yielded day-to-day control of WVOE to Station Manager Lester Frink. However, Walls and his Ebony Enterprises continues to own WVOE.
In a RBR+TVBR profile commemorating its 50th year of service, Walls was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, “There have been some lean years … Lean? There have been some pitiful years. Nobody’s getting rich here. But that’s all right. This is our community, and that’s why this station was created in the first place.”
Fast-forward seven years and three months, and the fate of WVOE is evermore dire. In an interview with WECT-6 in Wilmington, N.C., conducted August 16, Frink lamented that the decline in AM radio listening (WVOE has no FM translator) has greatly impacted the station as a going concern.
AM: ANEMIC MONETIZATION
Advertising revenue has been on a death spiral; it has now reached a breaking point.
Despite its continued delivery of “music with a message,” Black Gospel stations tend to be laggards when it comes to advertiser support. For Urban One, 50kw Class B WPZR-FM 102.7 in Detroit was sold to Educational Media Foundation for $12.7 million, as the station’s “Praise” inspirational programming in May 2018 shifted to 3 FM translators — becoming the Detroit Praise Network.
Eleven months later, Urban One departed Detroit altogether, as WDMK-FM 105.9 and the translators housing “Praise” were sold to Beasley Media Group. This transaction has not yet closed; the fate of these radio services is not yet known.
In Philadelphia, Dec. 10, 2018, saw the format change of Gospel WPPZ-FM 107.9 in Philadelphia to “Classic R&B,” as Urban One also saw revenue challenges in that market.
For North Carolina communities including Boardman, Whiteville and Bladenboro, “If the doors close … and we have to cut the signal off, I will be hurt. Lost,” Frink told WECT-6. “The station has been a part of my life since the beginning.”
While Gospel comprises the bulk of WVOE’s programming, it also plays Classic Soul and R&B — a mix that hasn’t changed in 57 years. Two turntables and aging equipment continue to bring audio entertainment to the town’s majority Black population.
Should WVOE disappear, a void would certainly emerge. But, a direct competitor would become the survivor. While just 15 local broadcast signals serve Chadbourn, Whiteville-based WENC-AM “Power 1220” — in business since 1974 — offers similar programming. Tune to the FM band, and locals can enjoy “Beach, Boogie & Shag” music from WVCO-FM 94.9 “The Surf,” although this station focuses on Myrtle Beach, S.C., to the southeast of Chadbourn.
Still, one can’t dispute that WVOE played a hand in bringing Carolina Beach music to wider audiences, spreading Soul music across the U.S. across the next 15 years.
Younger audiences have likely found Beasley’s WZFX-FM “Foxy 99” — a hip-hop leader targeting Fayetteville, to the north.
Still, some community members — particularly older African Americans — don’t want WVOE to sign off the air. They’ve helped financially, with local churches recruited to even bring new releases in the Gospel genre to the station, but that’s not enough. The studio control board is similar to one seen in the late 1980s at big-market radio stations.
To help WVOE avoid death, it has set up a GoFundMe page to deal with upkeep and repairs of the station. As of Noon on August 19, $100 had been raised, with a goal of $25,000.
Email inquiries and calls to the National Association of Black-Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) and to WVOE’s manager and station owner were not returned by RBR+TVBR‘s deadline.
“AMs were the heritage technology that broadcasters of color got into media with,” Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council (MMTC) President Emeritus David Honig told RBR+TVBR. “To this day, they disproportionately own AM signals and typically smaller ones not licensed to big cities and are most at risk for losing out in the new age. This is yet another example of this sad story.”
