WBLS - Urban Radio Pioneer

Urban Radio Pioneer

Early in 1975, WBLS Program Director Frankie Crocker made the first shift towards its present-day format—which was derived from its "Total Black Experience in Sound" moniker—by becoming the flagship station of the Mutual Broadcasting System's Mutual Black Network (now Sheridan Broadcasting's American Urban Radio Networks).

WBLS & Frankie Crocker, who's voice created the distinctive on-air station ID (its call letters echoing in full left-right-left-right stereo effect), was often the number one FM station in New York from during the early to middle 1970s. During this time its main competition was the original WKTU (then at 92.3 FM), a dance/disco station whose music rosters included black artists. Afterward, though, the station's ratings fell to number three. In August 1981, group owner RKO General went after WBLS' urban audience by reformatting adult contemporary WXLO (98.7 FM) into WRKS ("Kiss FM"). WRKS skyrocketed from the bottom of the pack to the top-five in the Arbitron ratings in just one rating period.

WBLS, WKTU and WRKS battled fiercely for the urban audience in the early 1980s. By that time, the three stations together so thoroughly dominated the New York-area radio ratings that they sent rock-and-roll-formatted radio fleeing to the suburbs—and drove the final nail into the coffin for music-formatted AM radio in New York, as WABC and WNBC each saw a sharp decline in their respective audiences. WABC, the biggest of the two and the dominant music station for a generation, eventually dropped music altogether and switched to a talk format in May 1982.