Building a Conversation, One Radio Show at a Time From New York Times, February 13, 2007 By Felicia R. Lee
At a gathering here [Hampton, Va.] Saturday of roughly 10,000 people who came for a conversation concerning the problems confronting blacks, Tom Joyner, the conference co-host, told the audience he had been “ready to be angry” as he took a tour about the Jamestown settlement nearby and thought of slave ships. What he experienced instead, he said, was not anger but something akin to his feelings about mainstream media coverage of blacks: a story certainly not from a black perspective.
“We’ve got to stop going to other people to get what we need,” Mr. Joyner told the predominantly black audience, here for “State of the Black Union,” an annual event, held this year at Hampton University in conjunction with the 400th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the first permanent English colony at Jamestown.
For the past 13 years, Mr. Joyner has been the host of “The Tom Joyner Morning Show,” which is dedicated to offering what he thinks blacks need: an unfiltered conversation about black life and black issues from a black perspective. Far less known outside African-American communities than other radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern, Mr. Joyner has an estimated eight million listeners in a given week in the roughly 120 markets where his show is syndicated, making it the nation’s largest black-oriented radio show.
Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois, said that black radio was “probably the most central vehicle for communicating with the masses of African-Americans.” And within that niche, he continued, Mr. Joyner’s show is “the pre-eminent vehicle.”
Unlike Mr. Stern or Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Joyner does not aspire to shock his audience or to hammer home a partisan position. In Mr. Joyner’s town square on the radio five mornings a week (with a recap on Saturdays offering highlights of the week’s shows), the conversation ranges from speculation about the White House to jokes about Whitney Houston. His guest list in the last year has included former President Bill Clinton; the actors Will Smith and Jamie Foxx; Senator Barack Obama of Illinois; the singers Lionel Richie and Aretha Franklin; the comedian Bill Cosby; the scholars Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker; and Bishop T. D. Jakes, the televangelist.
Mr. Joyner’s show blends such interviews with radio staples like news, sweepstakes and comedy. There’s a “cash call contest” and a humorous soap opera called “It’s Your World,” about a fictional, prosperous all-black town. The four-hour show also includes news analysis with Jacque Reid and celebrity news with Jawn Murray. Mr. Joyner’s site, BlackAmericaWeb.com, includes news, surveys and games.
As Martin Luther King’s Birthday approached last month, Mr. Joyner and his crew — which includes Sybil Wilkes, a newscaster, and the comedians J. Anthony Brown, “Ms. Dupre” and Myra J., who delivers tongue-in-cheek tips to single moms — joked on the air that listeners should remember to wish their white colleagues a happy holiday.
Mr. Joyner has had his share of setbacks, of course. He has failed to make a go of it in either Los Angeles or New York, the biggest markets in radio. His comedy-variety television series, “The Tom Joyner Show,” which was syndicated in 2005 in more than 100 markets, including New York, lasted only one year; Mr. Joyner blamed production costs for its demise.
Some critics say Mr. Joyner’s emphasis on his core audience — mostly female, middle-aged and middle-class — has led him to neglect certain issues. “A lot of issues on the younger end don’t get touched,” Paul Porter, a founder of Industry Ears, a research group dedicated to promoting justice in the media, said of Mr. Joyner’s radio show. Mr. Porter said that Mr. Joyner had largely missed the debate over the misogyny and violence found in the lyrics of some rap music. “There are topics he can’t discuss because of the advertisers,” Mr. Porter speculated.
Still, some people believe that Mr. Joyner is poised for greater visibility. Donna Brazile, the Democratic political strategist, is among them. “He is the black version of Rush Limbaugh, but he’s a lot different,” she said, in a telephone interview. “Rush Limbaugh speaks only to conservatives, the true believers. Joyner crosses over all the lines in the black community.”
Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke University and the director of the university’s Institute of Critical U.S. Studies, said: “I think you could make the argument that he’s the most important black man in black America. There are 32 million African-Americans and he reaches about one in four. He’s impacting people in their cultural quarters and in their everyday lives.”
Mr. Joyner, a husky, soft-spoken man with a Southern accent, demurs that he is merely a disc jockey who “superserves” his market: he has dispensed more than $3 million to nearly 2,000 contest winners since 2004 and $55 million since the Tom Joyner Foundation began in 1998 to help students at predominantly black colleges. His hot-button issues are quality education, jobs and the economy, health care and, lately, supporting the servicemen and women stationed overseas who call in to his show. He tells them that he hopes they come home from Iraq soon.
Unlike more strident pundits, Mr. Joyner does not tell listeners what to think. But what Mr. Joyner calls his “air advocacy” is on display, especially when he joins with Tavis Smiley, the media personality and editor of the best-selling book “The Covenant With Black America,” who offers twice-weekly commentary on Mr. Joyner’s show. Over the years, the two have led a number of campaigns. They pressured the owner of some slave artifacts to donate them to a museum instead of putting them up for bid at Christie’s auction house. They pushed for the Congressional Gold Medal for Rosa Parks , which she received in 1999.
Mr. Smiley said he came up with the idea for Mr. Joyner’s “Sky Shows” around the country (so named because Mr. Joyner flies in from his Dallas base to preside over them), which regularly draw large crowds. The free four-hour programs, like a recent one in Greensboro, N.C., can include a dance contest, performances by singers and comedians, pleas for voter registration and the presentation of checks to college students, all broadcast live to Mr. Joyner’s affiliates.
It is a measure of Mr. Joyner’s cultural and political capital that he was the co-host of Mr. Smiley’s annual State of the Black Union meeting in Hampton. Mr. Joyner received a standing ovation as he walked onstage and introduced panelists; later, he encouraged audience members to call friends to watch the C-Span broadcast of the event. The gathering attracted a Who’s Who that, among many others, included Bruce Gordon, the president and chief executive of the N.A.A.C.P.; Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and Chuck D., who founded the rap group Public Enemy.
It was a day of wide-ranging conversations, on everything from the racial identity of Senator Obama — who officially declared his candidacy for president that day — to the generation divide to cobbling together a black agenda in the post-civil-rights era. Much of the focus concerned the Feb. 1 release of “The Covenant in Action,” a companion volume to “The Covenant With Black America,” which Mr. Smiley promoted on Mr. Joyner’s show last year.
“These guys know black culture,” Representative Jackson, who has been a guest on the Joyner show, said. “They know black politics. They can switch from levity to defining issues and views for the average African-American in a way the 6 o’clock news cannot.”
Asked what he sees as his role in the 2008 election, in which the African-American vote is seen as critical, Mr. Joyner said, “We’re going to drive people to register to vote, we’re going to drive people to vote, and we’re going to keep those issues that affect us in the face of any of the candidates who are running.”
“Black radio is the only thing I’ve ever done,” said Mr. Joyner, who grew up in Tuskegee, Ala. (He does not give his age, but various sources list him as being in his late 50s.) He said he got his first break in the business in his hometown, when a local white-owned radio station set aside time each Saturday for black music; he volunteered to be the disc jockey.
Now Mr. Joyner, who lives in Dallas with his wife, Donna Richardson Joyner, has brought his family into his businesses: one son, Oscar Joyner, 32, is the president and chief operating officer of Reach Media Inc., his media company, while the other, Thomas Joyner Jr., 33, is the president and chief executive of his foundation.
Amy Alexander, a media critic who is writing a book on blacks and media, questioned Mr. Joyner’s penchant for having advertisers sponsor many of his contests and initiatives, however much good they do. Southwest Airlines sponsors the Sky Shows, for example. “He’s mixing a philanthropic tip with really rank commercialism,” Ms. Alexander said.
In response, Mr. Joyner said: “I’m just a D.J., but what I know is that last I checked, black people spend more than $600 billion annually. It seems to me that it just makes good business sense for advertisers to use black media to reach black consumers.” Reach Media has annual advertising revenues of $25 million, most from the radio show, according to company executives.
At the conference here on Saturday, Mr. Joyner reveled in the crowd’s enthusiasm for the way he brings home his message. “It is the perfect event at the perfect time for our people,” he said in an interview, noting his appearance on a historically black campus at a convocation center located on Emancipation Drive. “We can tell the story of Jamestown from our perspective and the story of this upcoming election in our own way. That’s what I do.”
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“We’ve got to stop going to other people to get what we need,” Mr. Joyner told the predominantly black audience, here for “State of the Black Union,” an annual event, held this year at Hampton University in conjunction with the 400th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the first permanent English colony at Jamestown.
For the past 13 years, Mr. Joyner has been the host of “The Tom Joyner Morning Show,” which is dedicated to offering what he thinks blacks need: an unfiltered conversation about black life and black issues from a black perspective. Far less known outside African-American communities than other radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern, Mr. Joyner has an estimated eight million listeners in a given week in the roughly 120 markets where his show is syndicated, making it the nation’s largest black-oriented radio show.
Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois, said that black radio was “probably the most central vehicle for communicating with the masses of African-Americans.” And within that niche, he continued, Mr. Joyner’s show is “the pre-eminent vehicle.”
Unlike Mr. Stern or Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Joyner does not aspire to shock his audience or to hammer home a partisan position. In Mr. Joyner’s town square on the radio five mornings a week (with a recap on Saturdays offering highlights of the week’s shows), the conversation ranges from speculation about the White House to jokes about Whitney Houston. His guest list in the last year has included former President Bill Clinton; the actors Will Smith and Jamie Foxx; Senator Barack Obama of Illinois; the singers Lionel Richie and Aretha Franklin; the comedian Bill Cosby; the scholars Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker; and Bishop T. D. Jakes, the televangelist.
Mr. Joyner’s show blends such interviews with radio staples like news, sweepstakes and comedy. There’s a “cash call contest” and a humorous soap opera called “It’s Your World,” about a fictional, prosperous all-black town. The four-hour show also includes news analysis with Jacque Reid and celebrity news with Jawn Murray. Mr. Joyner’s site, BlackAmericaWeb.com, includes news, surveys and games.
As Martin Luther King’s Birthday approached last month, Mr. Joyner and his crew — which includes Sybil Wilkes, a newscaster, and the comedians J. Anthony Brown, “Ms. Dupre” and Myra J., who delivers tongue-in-cheek tips to single moms — joked on the air that listeners should remember to wish their white colleagues a happy holiday.
Mr. Joyner has had his share of setbacks, of course. He has failed to make a go of it in either Los Angeles or New York, the biggest markets in radio. His comedy-variety television series, “The Tom Joyner Show,” which was syndicated in 2005 in more than 100 markets, including New York, lasted only one year; Mr. Joyner blamed production costs for its demise.
Some critics say Mr. Joyner’s emphasis on his core audience — mostly female, middle-aged and middle-class — has led him to neglect certain issues. “A lot of issues on the younger end don’t get touched,” Paul Porter, a founder of Industry Ears, a research group dedicated to promoting justice in the media, said of Mr. Joyner’s radio show. Mr. Porter said that Mr. Joyner had largely missed the debate over the misogyny and violence found in the lyrics of some rap music. “There are topics he can’t discuss because of the advertisers,” Mr. Porter speculated.
Still, some people believe that Mr. Joyner is poised for greater visibility. Donna Brazile, the Democratic political strategist, is among them. “He is the black version of Rush Limbaugh, but he’s a lot different,” she said, in a telephone interview. “Rush Limbaugh speaks only to conservatives, the true believers. Joyner crosses over all the lines in the black community.”
Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke University and the director of the university’s Institute of Critical U.S. Studies, said: “I think you could make the argument that he’s the most important black man in black America. There are 32 million African-Americans and he reaches about one in four. He’s impacting people in their cultural quarters and in their everyday lives.”
Mr. Joyner, a husky, soft-spoken man with a Southern accent, demurs that he is merely a disc jockey who “superserves” his market: he has dispensed more than $3 million to nearly 2,000 contest winners since 2004 and $55 million since the Tom Joyner Foundation began in 1998 to help students at predominantly black colleges. His hot-button issues are quality education, jobs and the economy, health care and, lately, supporting the servicemen and women stationed overseas who call in to his show. He tells them that he hopes they come home from Iraq soon.
Unlike more strident pundits, Mr. Joyner does not tell listeners what to think. But what Mr. Joyner calls his “air advocacy” is on display, especially when he joins with Tavis Smiley, the media personality and editor of the best-selling book “The Covenant With Black America,” who offers twice-weekly commentary on Mr. Joyner’s show. Over the years, the two have led a number of campaigns. They pressured the owner of some slave artifacts to donate them to a museum instead of putting them up for bid at Christie’s auction house. They pushed for the Congressional Gold Medal for Rosa Parks , which she received in 1999.
Mr. Smiley said he came up with the idea for Mr. Joyner’s “Sky Shows” around the country (so named because Mr. Joyner flies in from his Dallas base to preside over them), which regularly draw large crowds. The free four-hour programs, like a recent one in Greensboro, N.C., can include a dance contest, performances by singers and comedians, pleas for voter registration and the presentation of checks to college students, all broadcast live to Mr. Joyner’s affiliates.
It is a measure of Mr. Joyner’s cultural and political capital that he was the co-host of Mr. Smiley’s annual State of the Black Union meeting in Hampton. Mr. Joyner received a standing ovation as he walked onstage and introduced panelists; later, he encouraged audience members to call friends to watch the C-Span broadcast of the event. The gathering attracted a Who’s Who that, among many others, included Bruce Gordon, the president and chief executive of the N.A.A.C.P.; Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and Chuck D., who founded the rap group Public Enemy.
It was a day of wide-ranging conversations, on everything from the racial identity of Senator Obama — who officially declared his candidacy for president that day — to the generation divide to cobbling together a black agenda in the post-civil-rights era. Much of the focus concerned the Feb. 1 release of “The Covenant in Action,” a companion volume to “The Covenant With Black America,” which Mr. Smiley promoted on Mr. Joyner’s show last year.
“These guys know black culture,” Representative Jackson, who has been a guest on the Joyner show, said. “They know black politics. They can switch from levity to defining issues and views for the average African-American in a way the 6 o’clock news cannot.”
Asked what he sees as his role in the 2008 election, in which the African-American vote is seen as critical, Mr. Joyner said, “We’re going to drive people to register to vote, we’re going to drive people to vote, and we’re going to keep those issues that affect us in the face of any of the candidates who are running.”
“Black radio is the only thing I’ve ever done,” said Mr. Joyner, who grew up in Tuskegee, Ala. (He does not give his age, but various sources list him as being in his late 50s.) He said he got his first break in the business in his hometown, when a local white-owned radio station set aside time each Saturday for black music; he volunteered to be the disc jockey.
Now Mr. Joyner, who lives in Dallas with his wife, Donna Richardson Joyner, has brought his family into his businesses: one son, Oscar Joyner, 32, is the president and chief operating officer of Reach Media Inc., his media company, while the other, Thomas Joyner Jr., 33, is the president and chief executive of his foundation.
Amy Alexander, a media critic who is writing a book on blacks and media, questioned Mr. Joyner’s penchant for having advertisers sponsor many of his contests and initiatives, however much good they do. Southwest Airlines sponsors the Sky Shows, for example. “He’s mixing a philanthropic tip with really rank commercialism,” Ms. Alexander said.
In response, Mr. Joyner said: “I’m just a D.J., but what I know is that last I checked, black people spend more than $600 billion annually. It seems to me that it just makes good business sense for advertisers to use black media to reach black consumers.” Reach Media has annual advertising revenues of $25 million, most from the radio show, according to company executives.
At the conference here on Saturday, Mr. Joyner reveled in the crowd’s enthusiasm for the way he brings home his message. “It is the perfect event at the perfect time for our people,” he said in an interview, noting his appearance on a historically black campus at a convocation center located on Emancipation Drive. “We can tell the story of Jamestown from our perspective and the story of this upcoming election in our own way. That’s what I do.”
This article is from New York Times. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their Web site and register an account, if necessary, to view all their articles on the Web. Support quality journalism.
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