No Urban Radio Station In Pittsburgh- ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!!
So I was chillin’ in Pittsburgh over the weekend, catching up with some old friends and making new ones when I realized that there is no urban radio station in Pittsburgh. How is this possible in a city with a population of ninety-thousand African Americans making up 27% of the city’s population and a lot of cultural diversity, full of artists, poets and underground Hip-Hop? I mean every single channel that I turned to, was either religious, pop or country music. Don’t get it twisted I’m not knocking those genres, and the pop stations would play a few of the very popular Hip-Hop songs. Yet there was not a radio station that played a Combination of Hip-Hop and R&B. In addition, to not hear an ounce of soul on the radio was really disappointing. I could not even find an old school radio station that played artists like the Temptations. So what happened in Pittsburgh? There must have been an urban radio station at some point? Right???
The story is that the radio station WAMO, which had been in Pittsburgh for 55 years, was sold this past summer for 8.9 million dollars. Even though there was some protest and community uproar, very little action was taken and the community was completely ignored as they expressed their anger. It almost shows that the city of Pittsburgh completely disregards its black population. There are some alternatives, if you can even call them that. On the weekends The University of Pittsburgh Campus radio station host a R&B show and Carnegie Mellon on Sundays give local community members an alternative but relegates them to only 2 hours a week of Hip-Hop music. I just don’t think that a population of 90,000 people should be forced to only listen to Hip-Hop on the weekends!! Whelp now I know to stock up on my IPod with music next time I head out west!! For more information on the radio station please click on this link.
Peace
Kirin
