Bev Smith will be out of a job at the end of the month. If you don’t know who she is, she’s a black woman who broke into radio in Pittsburgh about 40 years ago. She is heard on about 30 radio stations, mostly Radio One’s racially segregated “urban” news/talk stations. Bev sees race and racism in every aspect of everything in her life. If she was doing a show asking what people eat for breakfast in the morning, it would turn into a screed about how those big corporations run by white people are trying to kill black men by selling sausage.
Her syndicator is out of money. Now that PPM has discovered that a significant part of the black audience was lying to Arbitron – writing down they were listening to radio all day when they weren’t – advertisers no longer want to buy ads. The fact that her audience demographics are aging doesn’t help.
Often in radio, when you are letting someone go and you think that could be trouble, you pull them off the air and pay them until the end of their contract. Since they get paid, that prevents a lawsuit and keeping them off the air prevents possible FCC fines and other lawsuits if they start “unloading” on the audience.
My guess is Radio One might hire her directly, or NPR might hire her to provide diversity. If she stays on the air for the next month, things could get very interesting.
Why is it, that when you hear a black talking about “those white’s”, that they seem to be more racist than white’s are ? , And I do not believe that there are, that many whites that are racist, people move into our so called “white” neighborhood’s, but if you are white don’t even think of moving into a so called predominantly “black” neighboorhood.
In a way, poor, oppressed and downtrodden Bev’s pink slip is showing. Oh, Heaven forefend! Will Wilkinsburg EVER be the same?
Wilkinsburg is the new Braddock.
I think I may have even assumed she was syndicated by Radio One. Here is her actual syndicator:
http://www.aurn.com/affiliates/aurnhistory.php
American Urban Media Networks is essentially the syndication arm of what was the WAMO empire in Pittsburgh. About two years ago, WAMO vanished overnight due to financial problems. The stations are now broadcasting the Catholic EWTN service. A new replacement for WAMO to ‘serve” the “black community” in Pittsburgh was recently started.