[IRCA] Philly's WHAT-AM Flips Format

["Tim Kridel" <tkridel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Black Philly radio station shuts after 8 decades 
WHAT-AM, 'voice' of black Philadelphia, silenced after 80 years on the air
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:36 p.m. CT Jan 14, 2007

PHILADELPHIA - The talk-radio station that called itself the city's "voice
of the African-American community" has shut down after more than eight
decades on the air.

WHAT-AM, which was founded in 1925 and 20 years later was among the first in
the nation to hire black on-air personalities, was a low-power station with
a small but loyal following. Its on-air talent, office workers and sales
staff were told Thursday that their jobs had been terminated.

WHAT is perhaps best known for longtime personality Mary Mason, a household
name in Philadelphia and an influential and nationally recognized voice on
the city's political landscape.

>From the time black talk-radio appeared in the 1960s until today, it has
been a powerful outlet for people who felt that other forms of media were
unresponsive to them, said Thaddeus P. Mathis of Temple University's Center
for African-American Research and Public Policy.

"It's a huge loss for the community," he said. "For some people, this is
their only way to find out what's happening; it's their key source of
information."

The station will be off the air, and playing a feed of blues music, until
upgrades are completed, said new owner Tom Kelly of Marconi Broadcasting Co.

Kelly declined to disclose the new station's format, adding that an
announcement would be made after the upgrades were complete. The programming
would remain locally based, he said.

Purchased for $5 million
WHAT was purchased for $5 million in November by Marconi, based in suburban
Havertown, from Inner City Broadcasting Corp., based in New York City.
Kelly, Marconi's president, owns a company that performs market research for
radio stations.

The station was ranked 29th out of 30 in listenership for the most recent
ratings period, but "that doesn't mean they weren't profitable," said Tom
Taylor, editor of the industry newsletter Inside Radio.

He also said that the end of WHAT does not reflect a larger trend
nationally. For example, urban broadcaster Radio One Inc. started a black
talk-radio network called Syndication One a year ago that is heard in six
cities.

"Every format decision gets made based on the specific situation in a
specific market at a specific time," Taylor said.

Kelly did not know how many employees were at WHAT. A message left Friday at
Inner City Broadcasting was not immediately returned.

"What we were doing was something that no one else was doing," said Bill
DiMascio, co-host of a WHAT show on criminal justice and punishment issues
and head of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. "It's important for the
community to feel like it has that kind of access."

'Mornings With Mary'
The station's loyal fan base can largely be attributed to Mason, who began
her broadcast career as a gospel-music host at WHAT in 1958.

Her talk show, "Mornings With Mary," started in 1970, according to a
biography on her Web site.

As a testament to her influence in the city's black community,
then-President Clinton did a live call-in show with Mason during a 1993
visit to Philadelphia. The following year, she was invited to join Nelson
Mandela, F.W. DeKlerk and Clinton on stage in Philadelphia when Mandela was
awarded the Liberty Medal.

WHAT is not the city's only radio station with a black talk-radio format but
it was unrivaled in its listenership, with a regular set of callers who
checked in daily with their favorite hosts, said Temple University's Mathis.

"People may not fully appreciate the loss until after it's gone for a
while," he said. "It filled a vital role and it's not clear who is going to
fill it."

C 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16623859/

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