One of the nation’s first radio stations to target Black listeners, and be owned by an African American licensee, has been silenced by Beasley Media Group.
The end of the AM station after 76 years on the air sends a message that, even with the NAB’s steadfast efforts to win Congressional passage of the “AM Radio in Every Vehicle Act,” not every kHz-band facility can survive in today’s digitally driven landscape.
On June 28, sixteen days after a request for a silent STA was made by Beasley, WAEC-AM 860 in Atlanta went dark.
A Class B facility, WAEC used 1 tower with 5kw during daylight hours while employing a directional, nighttime only 500-watt signal from 2 towers.
Today, it is “licensed and silent,” following the submission of the silent STA request on behalf of Beasley by Sally Buckman of Lerman Senter PLLC.
And, it officially marks the end of Beasley’s operations in Atlanta, with “Playa Atlanta” no longer serving the market on WAEC after debuting on the station in November 2023. The company one year ago sold Class D WWWE-AM “REAL 1100” in Hapeville, Ga., serving Atlanta with 5kw watts during daylight hours, to Davis Broadcasting, Inc.
It’s a stark difference from June 2003, when Beasley expressed its interest in expanding through the acquisition of large-market AMs. Between April 2002 and March 2003, WAEC and WWWE brought the company $1.8 million in revenue. At the time, WWWE was regional Mexican; WAEC aired a religious format. That devotion to Jesus dated to 1978, when WAEC became the first Atlanta radio station to embrace Contemporary Christian music, taking the moniker “Love 86.”
WAEC signed on the air in 1948 as WERD, as a 1kw daytime-only radio station. One year later, Jesse Blayton Sr. bought WERD for $50,000, and devoted its programming to the Black community in Atlanta. For 20 years, WERD would prove to be an essential voice of the Black population in Atlanta at a time when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was said to have an office directly under the station’s studio.
Meanwhile, the WAEC tower site has been sold by Beasley Media Group to Toll Brothers, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s longtime local media reporter, Rodney Ho, reports. This means townhomes are coming to the land that housed the station’s broadcast tower.
WERD’s main competitor in its earliest days was pioneering R&B radio station WAOK in Atlanta. By the end of the 1970s WVEE, under the programming leadership of Scotty Andrews, would dominate African-American listening as “V-103” — the market’s first FM to target the Black community in Atlanta. Then, in 1985, WAOK would become a sibling to V-103 as the owner agreed to sell WPLO-AM. By this time WERD had been well-enshrined in Atlanta’s radio past.
