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WVON: Why Media Ownership Matters
The history of Chicago’s WVON-AM is of particular interest to the history of Chicago broadcasting and minority media ownership. Phil and Leonard Chess, owners of Chess Records, purchased WHFC-1450AM -- a 1,000-watt radio station licensed to Cicero, Illinois -- in the early 1960s and changed its call letters to WVON. April 1, 1963 marked the first time Chicago had a station that targeted African Americans around the clock. WVON then consistently ranked in the top 5 of the "most listened to" stations in the market.
The power of WVON went beyond the Chicago market. Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, had a special arrangement with WVON: every song he produced would be sent immediately to WVON before any other station. Rotation on WVON was so powerful that it influenced airplay in other markets, which impacted the overall sales and success of the project. During the Civil Rights Movement, WVON was the voice of information for local and national affairs and during the riots that followed the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., WVON on-air personalities attempted to ease the tension that had erupted in neighborhoods across Chicago.
Following the death of Leonard Chess in 1969, the Chess family decided to sell WVON to George Gillette (heir to shaving products company) and Potter Palmer (heir to Chicago’s Palmer House). They formed Globetrotter Communications and their first order of business was to move WVON from 1450 frequency to the 5,000 watt 1390 signal, which would improve their coverage of Chicago. The 1450 frequency was left dormant.
In the mid 1970s, as the radio market in Chicago became more competitive and FM radio began to gain momentum, new management at Globetrotter Communications decided to fire the entire on-air staff at WVON. In 1977, Globetrotter Communications sold WVON to the Gannett Company, whose major holdings were in print media. Gannett had purchased an FM station in Chicago, which became known as WGCI.(1)
Two former WVON on-air personalities formed Midway Broadcasting Corporation and purchased the license for the 1450-AM frequency. Their station, WXOL, premiered in August 1979 and remains one of the few minority-owned stations in the market. In 1984, following Gannett's decision to drop the WVON call letters from its signal, WXOL's owners immediately filed with the FCC to obtain the WVON call letters.
In 1986, at the height of the Black community's political involvement in Chicago, which resulted in the election of Harold Washington, Chicago's first African-American mayor, Midway Broadcasting opted to change the station's format to talk, providing Chicago with its first Black-talk radio format.
In the mid-1990s, now-University of Minnesota professor Catherine Squires surveyed WVON’s audience in order to determine whether listeners were utilizing the information transmitted by the station in their political decision-making processes and in relation to their communities.(2) Though not a news format, talk radio has had its place in public affairs programming for at least two decades. Many of the 232 people she surveyed said they believed the mainstream news framed stories in ways that blamed Black people for their problems, only covered the negative in Black communities, and tended to homogenize Black people and their experiences. By contrast, Black-owned media were, they said, “explicitly interested in Black issues and Black progress.” WVON listeners, she learned, used that medium to voice their views, debate issues, and learn about things that were happening in which they might participate (e.g., marches and other events).
Squires’ research findings are similar to research filed in the FCC’s current review of media ownership rules.(3) Carolyn Byerly et al found that African-Americans who prefer to get news from local radio prefer minority-owned radio stations because “they give you the only accurate reporting.” A significant number of the African-Americans surveyed (12 %) perceive widespread media bias against African American communities. Forty percent of the people surveyed said the news does not help them to understand the problems that are most important to them – safety, lack of income, and lack of affordable housing. And the problems of media bias are not limited to the African American community. As the National Association of Hispanic Journalists has reported, national television newscasts ignore Latinos and Latino-related issues.(4)
1. WGCI, now owned by Clear Channel, is the second most-listened to radio station in Chicago, behind the Tribune Company’s WGN.
2. Squires, Catherine R. “Black Talk Radio: Defining Community Needs and Identity.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. 1999.
3. Byerly, Carolyn M., Kehbuma Langmia and Jamila A. Cupid. Media Ownership Matters: Localism, the Ethnic Minority News Audience and Community Participation. From “Does Bigger Media Equal Better Media? Four Academic Studies of Media Ownership in the United States.” Benton Foundation and Social Science Research Council. October 2006. http://www.benton.org/benton_files/MediaOwnershipReportfinal.pdf
4. Montalvo, Daniela and Joseph Torres. Network Brownout Report 2006. National Association of Hispanic Journalists. 2006. http://www.nahj.org/resources/2006Brownout.pdf