'Talk,' in the Past Tense: Why There Are No More Petey Greenes on Local Radio

In Washington, Greene's down-home manner and compelling personal story -- he learned to be a DJ by playing records for fellow inmates while serving time at Lorton for armed robbery -- won him a special place in listeners' hearts.

"Petey was easy to listen to, easy to understand, by everybody," says Ambrose Lane Sr., whose talk show, "We Ourselves," has run on listener-supported WPFW (89.3 FM) since 1978, and who, like Madison, now juggles local and national issues because his program also airs coast to coast on XM. "When Petey warned people during the '68 riots, it was real, because people knew he was real. He was a phenomenon created by a combination of that time of great change and his personality.

"Today, we have different times and a totally different scene."

What changed, Lane says, is the corporate structure of radio, as the 1996 deregulation of the medium allowed a handful of huge companies to buy up thousands of stations. Subsequently, those new owners cut costs by reducing local programming and using nationally syndicated shows.

That transition in black radio is personified in Washington by Cathy Hughes, who -- with then-husband Dewey Hughes -- bought WOL from its last white owner in 1980.

Cathy Hughes, whose seminal role in reshaping black radio is written out of "Talk to Me," dropped WOL's soul hits format to create something new: an all-talk station aimed at black Washington. On her own talk show, Hughes rallied the audience to become part of her "WOL family." Loyal listeners traveled with her on pilgrimages to Africa and to demonstrations in the District.

Hughes became a firebrand and a political power broker -- more influential than Greene ever was -- but by the mid-'90s, she had found a higher calling, leaving the airwaves to devote herself to her company's burgeoning role as a purchaser of black-oriented stations across the nation.

Having won entree to ownership, Hughes and the next generation of black radio executives -- led by Hughes's son, Radio One chief executive Alfred Liggins III -- focused on creating stockholder value more than on the street-level bonds that black DJs formed with local listeners.

WOL's lineup today consists mainly of nationally syndicated talk shows -- a sports show from Atlanta, a radio lawyer from Chicago, rabble-rouser Al Sharpton from New York. Madison tries to take on enough local issues to make Washington listeners feel as if the station still connects as it did when its studios were a storefront on H Street NE. (In the Hollywood version, WOL is in what looks like a bank building in Toronto. Go figure.)

"The trick is to find a healthy hybrid, where you can make money with good syndicated programming and still emphasize local news and issues," Madison says. "That's my challenge every morning."