WBLS

Early years[edit]

The 107.5 frequency in New York City signed on in July 1951 as WEVD-FM, simulcasting its sister station at 1330 AM. Within a few years, WEVD-FM moved to 97.9, and 107.5 went off the air.


Several years later the New Broadcasting Company, then-owners of WLIB, was awarded a construction permit for the dormant frequency and on September 15, 1965 WLIB-FM signed on. As the Federal Communications Commission had recently instituted a rule prohibiting full-time AM/FM simulcasting in large markets, WLIB-FM was programmed with a Jazz format. The stations were split up in 1972, when Inner City Broadcasting purchased WLIB (AM); WLIB-FM was then renamed WBLS.^[3] Inner City reunited the pair with its purchase of WBLS in 1974.^[4][5]


From 1972 to 1978, WBLS was the flagship station of the Mutual Black Network (now the American Urban Radio Networks).


As part of the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation stations, program director Frankie Crocker held 5% of the radio market in the northeast from 1975 to 1978, only ceding the title of top R&B station to upstart WKTU when that station broke out playing disco and club music in 1979. By 1982 it had fallen to number 3 in the market.^[6]


In 1993, Calvin O. Butts, pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, led a threat to boycott the station if they played any form of gangsta rap. Butts' protests culminated in his bulldozing a pile of hip-hop recordings during a rally. In response to the protests, WBLS excised most hip hop music from its air and carefully screened what it did play for content and language.^[7]


In 1995, after WRKS was purchased by Emmis Communications and dropped all hip-hop music in favor of a similar adult R&B format, WBLS countered with a controversial advertising campaign labeling WRKS as a "plantation station."^[8] WBLS shortly reverted to urban contemporary, only to exit again in 2004 when WBLS switched to urban adult contemporary.