Dr. Bob Lochte, JMC dept. chair, was the featured speaker at the University’s Feb. 11 Brown-Bag Lunch. The lunch is sponsored by the Provost and provides an opportunity for faculty to share their research with their peers.
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| Dr. Bob Lochte covered the origins of African American radio in the late 1940s as part of the University’s Brown-Bag Lunch series.
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Lochte’s presentation was WDIA – Memphis: The First Radio Station Programmed for African Americans by African Americans.
The presentation chronicled how a new 250-watt AM daytimer with limited capital had very little chance of success in Memphis, the second largest city in the South, in 1947. When the owners decided to target the large African American population, the WDIA audience grew rapidly and the station reached number two in the ratings in less than two years. In the process, WDIA created a format which was imitated in markets across the South and beyond and became a training ground for African American radio personalities.
