Most times when you create an idea, you’re not sure its significance or consequences. But one of my ideas has had significant impact and consequences for Indianapolis’ African-American community.
Twenty years ago this week, I launched Indianapolis’ first daily African-American oriented radio talkshow, an hour on the new extension of WTLC-AM Radio at (1310).
The idea behind WTLC-AM, created by then General Manager Al “The Bishop” Hobbs, Program Director “Super Jay” Johnson and myself, was to have the AM station appeal to different segments of our Black community, thus freeing up WTLC-FM to concentrate on playing the R&B hits the mass of the community wanted to hear.
Competition from WHHH-FM (96.3), which had begun a year earlier, had created economic pressures for WTLC. Our famed full time news department was severely cut back, bringing pressure for WTLC to upgrade the information provided our community.
I’d been regularly travelling to Washington serving on a national broadcasters committee. During those trips I’d listen to a Black station, WOL-AM, and its morning talkshow hosted by Cathy Hughes.
Hughes, the station’s owner and general manager, hosted a program that engaged Black Washingtonians with interviews and commentary. Listening to her show, I got a feeling for what was happening in DC’s Black community.
I thought if Hughes could own a station and host a talkshow, then maybe I could take my then 15 years experience hosting WTLC’s “Morning with the Mayor” monthly talkshows and create a show for Indianapolis patterned after what Hughes and Black talk hosts were doing in other cities.
So, on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 1992, WTLC-AM’s “The Noon Show” was born, bringing to Indy what Washington, New York, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and other Black communities already had, a vehicle for African-Americans to express their hopes, fears, dreams and frustrations.
Before then, WTLC only had a half-hour Sunday telephone talkshow. “Operation Breadbasket,” WTLC’s venerable Saturday morning issues program, and the Indianapolis Recorder radio magazine show on WPZZ only disseminated information. There wasn’t a way to respond back.
“The Noon Show” then was something new and different for Indianapolis. When I left 21 months later to work with Bill Mays and Bill Shirk, Wendell Ray, WTLC’s lead newsman at the time, took over the program and expanded upon what I’d begun.
By the end of the 1990s, “The Noon Show” morphed into first an evening, then an afternoon talkshow called “The Bottom Line” hosted by Willie Middlebrook. Middlebrook added a harder edge to Black talk in Indy, adhering to Frederick Douglass’ dictum “Agitate, Agitate, Agitate.”
Nine years ago, the circle closed when “Afternoons with Amos” premiered, combining what “The Noon Show” began with “The Bottom Line’s” passion and advocacy.
Over these 20 years, Indy’s Black (and white) institutions have had to confront the reality that their actions and inactions are openly critiqued by our African-American community. Those open and direct critiques have, at times, angered Black politicians, preachers and institutions.
Currently, attempting to stave off community criticism and concern about their efforts, a major Black institution is embarked on a major effort to emasculate Indy’s Black radio talkshows.
Despite this most recent reactionary effort, what I came up with 20 years ago, giving our Black community a strong voice has, for better or worse, been embraced by our African-American community. It’s had a significant impact on America’s 13th largest Black community.
Yes, sometimes an idea can transform a community.
What I’m hearing
in the streets
The fight over expanding those downtown TIF districts has created serious rifts among the City-County Council’s Democratic majority. Councilors Vop Osili and Joe Simpson crafted a deal with Deputy Mayor Deron Kintner to expand the TIF into the working class neighborhoods north of Bush Stadium between Riverside and Watkins Parks – an area that has been ignored by city and private developers for years.
Osili and Simpson got Kintner to agree to add several million dollars for job training and opportunities for those living in the area as well as loan opportunities for minority businesses.
The effort for improving employment and opportunity in their districts caused Democrats on a council committee to OK the TIF measure in a bizarre parliamentary action that alienated Committee Chair Steve Talley and other top leaders in the Democratic council majority.
I applaud Simpson and Osili trying to do something for folks in their districts. But I don’t know Kintner and I distrust whether Mayor Ballard’s administration would do anything that would put Blacks into meaningful jobs.
So, it’s too early to tell whether this TIF deal will be a positive thing for our community or another in a series of disappointments.
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A sign of the leadership vacuum in Indianapolis comes with the travails of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Because of a failed fundraising effort, the symphony faces a calamitous fiscal crisis. Symphony leaders want the musicians to bear the brunt of management’s ineptitude. Management wants the musicians to severely cut back their workload, endure a nearly 50 percent cut in pay and a reduction of a third of the orchestra.
Where’s the leadership from our absent mayor in this crisis? Where are the civic and business leaders? Do they want our world class city to have a third world class symphony?
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A couple of years ago, the Indiana Legislature approved classifying non-profit organizations as “minority-owned” or “women-owned” entities if they provided “unique” services not provided by any for-profit.
When I obtained the database of state-certified minority and women-owned businesses, I found that Indiana Black Expo and the Indiana Minority Health Coalition (IMHC) were certified as women-owned businesses. Seems they were classified that way because their CEOs were women.
It seemed bizarre that IBE and Indiana’s minority health organization weren’t classified as “minority” businesses. I raised this concern to Felecia Roseburgh, deputy commissioner of administration and head of Indiana’s minority business division.
In an email, Roseburgh agreed that Expo and IMHC should be “classified as MBE firms,” saying the WBE classification was “an error on our part.”
How many other bizarre “errors” are in the state’s minority business database?
See ‘ya next week.
You can email comments to acbrown@aol.com.
