Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 20, 1993 TAG: 9311190348
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MELANIE S. HATTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But what's important to its listeners is that WTOY is a hometown station in the heart of Roanoke's black community with hometown DJs talking to their neighbors, friends and family.
Even prisoners in jail call in.
"The operator says it's a collect call, and you'll hear them shout out the name of the request," says morning DJ and production manager Tone "Tiger" Ellis. He doesn't accept the call, but usually plays their request.
"I used to listen [to WTOY] when I was a kid all the time," said the 22-year-old William Fleming High School graduate. "And now I work here. It freaks me out."
Ellis bounces to the music in his earphones as he waits for the song to end so he can give the weather report and a church announcement. His chair squeaks as he moves. He plays compact discs, but two old turntables with a penny for the needle are to his right. They're mostly used for the gospel albums that line the back wall of the small booth.
Daniel "Duke" Ellington, the station's program director, does the gospel show that follows Ellis'. Ellington also is a Fleming graduate and listened to the station as a teen-ager.
The 5,000-watt station sits at the intersection of Lafayette Boulevard and Cove Road in a modest white building that used to be a beauty shop. It moved there in November from Salem. The Community Barber Shop is next door.
WTOY's owner, Irvin L. Ward, rebuilt the interior to accommodate a radio booth, production room and offices. An old aqua-colored General Electric refrigerator, left over from the beauty shop, stands in the corner of one of the cramped offices.
The station`s new location makes it convenient for people to visit.
Richard Pennix, a deacon at Central Baptist Church, stopped in with a church announcement one day recently and sat awhile to shoot the breeze. Pennix warmly shook hands with Ellington and talked about the days when they attended the same church and lived in the old Kimball neighborhood.
"I've known Mr. Pennix so long he's part of the family," Ellington said.
While the station has its fans, money is key to success in the business. It competes with FM stations that have much stronger signals, like V103 in Lynchburg - which recently leaped up the ratings chart - and to a lesser extent urban stations from Greensboro, N.C. But after slipping in the ratings, WTOY made a small gain recently. It was 14th in the Arbitron ratings survey this last spring, with 0.7 percent of the listeners aged 12 and up. That was an increase from 0.3 percent in the fall of 1992, and while it wasn't much, Ellington is claiming a victory.
"That was cause for celebration," he said. "Every little inch a snail goes, it gets closer to his destination."
This summer, Ellington, 38, was promoted from a weekend DJ to program director to help restructure the station. At the same time, he's rebuilding his own life. Ellington's getting a second chance from the man who helped launch his radio career in 1980. After a conviction of being an accessory to forgery while working for Ward at WSAY, he figured his radio career was over. From there he went to a series of jobs as a restaurant cook, then was rehired by Ward last November.
"I give Elder Ward credit for trusting me," Ellington said. "I'm fighting hard, and I'm serious now," he said. "It's a personal mission for me ... . It's not about money."
\ WTOY has made changes in its programming this year that it hopes will draw more listeners. Sundays had always been devoted to gospel and religious programming, but since April there has also been a gospel show from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day.
In addition, there is now a full hour of blues following the gospel show, and more jazz to attract the 35-to-55 age group. "The FMs have got the young people sewed up anyway, so we're going for the older audience," Ellington said. "We know we're the underdogs."
Advertisers go with the station with the highest ratings, but commercials have started to pick up. "We have to sell ourselves a little harder," Ellington said.
Ellington and Ward considered an all-gospel format, but decided to stick to what they've got for now. "Spirituality is coming back in style," Ellington said. "We'll probably expand the gospel another hour." The fact that the station is owned by a minister has its influence, he said.
Ward, pastor of the New Dimensional Church of God in Christ in Bedford, bought the station in November 1987 from an old friend, Bishop L.E. Willis of Norfolk, who owns radio stations in several states.
"I felt this would be a good avenue where minority views could be heard unedited," he said. "Gospel is my love, but you have to serve the community" by offering other styles of music.
However, it's the gospel that keeps the station running. About 50 percent of the advertising comes during the gospel show, Ward said.
The station signs on at 5:30 a.m. and signs off at 9 p.m. "We are authorized to be 24-hour, but we want to have the right mix," Ward said. "We don't want to be on just to be on."
WTOY is pursuing the possibility of switching to FM, but cannot unless the Federal Communications Commission opens another FM band. Going to FM would be moving into the big leagues, where there is more competition for advertising.
"This might be all I can take on," Ward said. "I got a calling to be a minister."
Ward is trying to decide where he wants to be when he turns 50, four years from now. "I want to be sure of what I want to focus my attention on," be it his ministry or the station. But he understands the importance of the station to the black community.
The station provides relevant information, he said. Its DJs can talk about Roanoke's schools or what's happening next door. Stations outside Roanoke can't do that.
\ WTOY was the first black station in the Roanoke Valley when it signed on in February, 1969, at 910 AM in a building on Church Avenue in downtown Roanoke. The station owners, Connie and Barry Houseman, came up with a fun theme using toy blocks as their logo.
They had researched the radio market and discovered black radio stations were operating in larger cities. "There was no station in the valley that ... had the black sound or gave the black community a voice," said Connie Houseman, who owns Dixie Caverns and Pottery.
But Houseman didn't know how people would accept it. Here was a black station getting its start in the wake of the civil rights movement and being operated by white owners - Houseman was 22 and did all the paperwork.
"This was when the NAACP was very big and becoming very strong," she said. "It was the right time but a scary time" to start a black station.
Of the 10,834 radio stations in the nation, only 175 are black-owned, according to a September 1992 study by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Most - 111 - are AM stations.
The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters in Washington, D.C., says most black stations are in the Southeast, and most are gospel stations. They are not dying, but they're not growing either, said Fred Brown of the association's marketing department.
Black stations grew in popularity during the 1970s after the Motown explosion of the 1960s. But since then, the number has remained much the same. One of the challenges that black stations face is trying to find advertisers wanting to target a black audience.
Plus, often there's no cultural affinity with young blacks. As long as a station plays the hits, they don't care if it's black-owned, Brown said.
Throughout WTOY's almost 25-year history, it has moved numerous times. It's had a number of different owners. But it's still humming and providing a service with no signs of wearing down.
"We mold it and shape it every day," Ellington said. "We're gonna be here no matter what.''
Keywords:
PROFILE
Memo: ***CORRECTION***