KROI-FM (92.1) in Houston is switching from Black Gospel music to All News on November 14th.
This is a head scratcher – Radio One is the radio network that targets all of its programming only at Black Americans. Radio one operates the http://www.blackplanet.com/ web site that supports segregation of dating by race, among other things. Houston is not exactly the type of city that seems likely to support a 24 hr/day all news station.
In the news release, the station says its goal is to “give people the facts without the biased opinions that dominate so-called news stations,’
This is coming from the so-called radio network that syndicates Reverand Al Sharpton and several dozen radio stations that exhibit an extreme lack of diversity in their on-air staff.
This looks like it may be an LMA deal – the guy putting this together is named Ed Shane and he seems to specialize in doing consulting to country music stations, of which Radio One operates none in that genre. Almost all of the staff for this station are former Houston area TV News people. Radio is not “TV without the picture”. There is going to be a steep learning curve when there are no pictures to point to and no weather maps.
Good luck! The world is going to need a lot more people not in the so-called news business.