WBLS
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WBLS is an Urban Adult Contemporary FM radio station that is licensed to New York City, operating on 107.5 MHz frequency.
WBLS first broadcast in the summer of 1974, with Frankie Crocker as the Program Director. Crocker redefined R&B radio with the term Urban contemporary targeting listeners 18-34 years of age. It was a combined format that included R&B, jazz, pop, reggae, gospel, dance music, and later, rap. WBLS is owned by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. Its city of license is New York City and its tower is located on the Empire State Building, which is also home to the majority of the New York area television and radio station towers since September 11, 2001.
History
The station signed on in July 1951 as WEVD-FM. On September 15, 1965, WEVD changed its call letters to WLIB, the same calls as its sister AM station at 1190 kHz. In the 1960s WLIB-FM held to a Jazz format. This morphed to a more eclectic format that included R&B, Soul and Vocalese (poetry & prose ala Nikki Giovanni and the Last Poets). This format was called "The Total Black Experience in Sound" and featured Del Shields and Frankie Crocker as DJs. The evolution of this became the "Urban "Contemporary" sound. In 1974, it changed calls once again, this time to WBLS.WBLS was often the number one FM station in New York from 1974 to 1978, competing often with WKTU-FM, a dance/disco station whose music rosters included black artists. Afterward, though, the station's ratings fell to number three. In the spring of 1980, WBLS was number one again but incorporated rap music into its playlists. In August 1981, RKO General, who owned WXLO (99X), went after WBLS' urban audience by launching WRKS-FM (98.7 Kiss FM). WXLO rose from 22nd place to third place on the Arbitron ratings in just one rating period. WBLS, WKTU and WRKS battled for the urban audience in the early 1980's. WKTU was sold in 1985 and WRKS later became a hip hop station due to its rap-influenced format. WBLS became better known as an R&B station, and retains the format to this day.
In 1986, Emmis Broadcasting launched WQHT-FM, a dance/freestyle station pilfering listeners away from numerous radio stations around the city, forcing WBLS to incorporate Dance music to their playlists again.
In 1993 the Reverend Calvin Butts and other religious groups threatened to boycott the station if they played any form of "gangsta rap." By the end of that year the station banned the music except for clean versions of it. WBLS introduced the market's first Urban Adult Contemporary format in 1994 and continued to stay in the top ten Arbitron ratings until Emmis Broadcasting purchased WRKS-FM (Kiss FM) in December of that year and changed the format targeting the station's 25 to 54 audience. In 1997 WBLS reintroduced rap back on its playlists and crept back up to the top five Arbitron ratings. In 2004 Deon Levingston was appointed as the new general manager of the station and changes the format back to Urban Adult Contemporary. Many young African American listeners disagreed with Levingston, feeling that WBLS does better with young listeners and is the mother station for the Urban contemporary format.
WBLS is currently the flagship station for the very controversial radio show, [the Wendy Williams Experience], hosted by female shock-jock Wendy Williams.
As a side note, in August 2004, ICBC, Inner City Broadcasting's radio subsidiary, redeemed nearly $140 million [link] accreted value of redeemable preferred stock in a recapitalization led by GE Capital and Alta Communications, a Boston-based private equity firm [link].
Current Line-Up
Weekdays- The Steve Harvey Morning Show with Jacque Reid, Nephew Tommy (Thomas Miles) and Ann Tripp - 6am to 10am
- Guy Black - 10am to 2pm
- The Wendy Williams Experience - 2pm to 7pm
- The Quiet Storm with Vaughn Harper - 7pm to 12am
- Champaine - 12am to 6am
- Champaine - 12am to 5am
- Rosie G - 6am to 10am
- Chris Welch - 10am to 2pm
- Eddie Love - 2pm to 7pm
- The Ballroom with Dahved Levy - 7pm to 10pm
- Live Broadcast - 10pm to 2am
- BeBe Winans (gospel) - 5am to 8am
- Express Yourself with Gary Byrd - 8am to 10am
- Dr. Darcel Hollaway (gospel) - 10am to 12pm
- Sunday Classics with Hal Jackson - 12pm to 4pm
- The Caribbean Feva with Dahved Levy - 4pm to 7pm
- The Quiet Storm with Vaughn Harper - 7pm to 12am
Management
- General Manager - Deon Levingston
- Program Director - Vinny Brown
- Music Coordinator - Stacy Anderson
- Director of Sales - Leon Van Gelder
- Director of Marketing - Anthony Horn
External link
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