The Long Kiss Goodbye: Fear of a Black Planet Killed a Black Radio Station

Humiliation And Retribution

In the early 1980s, 98.7 Kiss FM climbed in the ratings. But it still hadn’t beaten WBLS.

“It took longer than I thought it would take,” Mayo said.

WBLS had a “lock” on the concert promotions that were crucial to the positioning and revenue of radio stations. Mayo simply couldn’t find artists who’d be willing to align themselves with Kiss for fear of angering Crocker. But many folks in the music industry had tired of Crocker’s monopoly, and the abuse of power that came with it. When Barry Mayo was offered one of the hottest acts in the business — Rick James and Teena Marie — it was Kiss’s big break.

The concert at Madison Square Garden was packed. The “lips” logo of 98.7 Kiss FM hung everywhere. It was Mayo’s dream come true, until it turned into a nightmare — when, to Mayo’s slack-jawed shock, Frankie Crocker himself strode onstage and introduced the headline act.

A livid Mayo ran backstage, spotted Crocker — thronged by admirers — and mouthed the words that would change their lives:

I am going to get you, motherfucker.


The Turning Point

Hip-hop soon changed the balance of power between the two stations.

To be clear: Both men hated rap. Since the emergence of the first “rap” record in 1979 — “Rappers Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang, Frankie Crocker had given airplay only grudgingly to the occasional single, and only then after it had exploded in the streets, clubs, and stores. When a DJ named “Mr. Magic” started attracting a sizable audience of young New Yorkers to his all-rap radio show on a small, community station called WHBI, Crocker co-opted him — giving him a weekend time slot on WBLS and a bigger audience than ever; but confining rap to Magic’s shift for the most part.

Over at 98.7 Kiss-FM, Barry Mayo fought constantly with his boy wonder music director, an Italian kid named Tony Quarterone, who insisted that Mayo’s own vaunted research showed that rap was becoming more and more the favorite of WRKS’s audience, with songs like “Planet Rock” and “The Message.” To Mayo, rap looked and sounded like disco’s bastard ghetto child.

And it was, until one day in 1983, Mayo played the record that forever divorced rap from disco.

He did it as a favor for a friend, a young promoter named Manny Bella who worked for Profile Records. Bella thrust forward the record by a strangely named group — “Run-D.M.C.”  As the on-air jock played the song, “It’s Like That,” Mayo watched the phones light up. Then the DJ flipped the record and played the b-side, a song called “Sucker M.C.s.” Mayo absolutely hated what he was hearing: No music. Just a beat. And someone scratching a record. It sounded like… a mistake.

Then Mayo looked at the phones again. Pandemonium.

Mayo went against every musical and cultural instinct he had and put Run-D.M.C.’s first single into daytime rotation. Crocker didn’t. Mayo banged Run-D.M.C.’s record throughout the summer of [1984]. He hired the Zulu DJs to do a weekend rap show to rival that of Mr. Magic. He let Tony “Q” program more rap records during the day. And in the next ratings “book,” Barry Mayo achieved the impossible. 98.7 Kiss FM beat WBLS in the ratings.

Bill Stephney, who was at the time a college DJ on Long Island and would soon be head of radio promotion for Def Jam Recordings, spoke of the moment as a real turning point:

“Kiss beat ‘BLS in book after book. For two decades.”

WBLS and Frankie Crocker never really recovered.

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