IslandMix - Soca, Reggae, Zouk and Caribbean Entertainment

a big part of who and what we are is no more!!

WLIB signs off after 30 years

New York radio station, WLIB, which for more than 30 years provided Caribbean expatriates with news and views and music from home, will cease broadcasting on March 31.
WLIB offered one of the very few opportunities to hear serious discussion of Caribbean affairs on American airwaves.

The station's mostly Caribbean broadcast team discovered that they were out of a job on Wednesday when they reported for work and were turned away with their final pay cheques.

Owned by Inner City Broadcasting, WLIB was sold to a group of broadcasters allied with the Democratic Party who say they will use the station to challenge the dominance of conservative voices on America’s airwaves.

The chief executive of the new liberal talk radio station is a former advisor to Senator John Kerry.

Shocked and angry at the sale of the station, a group of influential Caribbean-Americans, including Trinidadian calypsonian the Mighty Sparrow, said they are determined to set up their own entirely Caribbean broadcast station.

"I have access to people like Colonial Life Insurance Company and they would glad to, perhaps, put up all the money that’s needed," said Sparrow from his home in Brooklyn, New York.

"We would have enough funds so that that the 'little man' can come on board and he can be a part of it. We not going to be absorbed into the mainstream. Our culture does not permit that."

African-American businessman Percy Sutton who is the chairman of Inner City Broadcasting was quoted in the New York Daily News as saying the decision was partly a financial one.

"WLIB has lost money for 30 years," he said. "This arrangement will enable us to send much of the same message we have sent on WLIB, but with the opportunity to reach a much larger, national audience."

oye penny,

this subject was touched on in 2 big threads lass week. i'll move it over later, but check these 2 threads for ppl's perspective.

What to make of this? What changes for WLIB ?

Thanks radio pirates...

salty