'Bev Smith Show' leaving airwaves
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She has hosted presidents, kings, comedians, educators and death row inmates, her show has won more than 300 awards and she's repeatedly listed as one of the 50 "top talkers" in the country.
But Bev Smith, the only nationally syndicated black female talk show host on radio, will no longer be on the air as of Oct. 28 -- and not just gone from Pittsburgh's WGBN-AM, but absent from 30 other AM radio markets across the country, including New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.
Contrary to rumors of ill health, Ms. Smith says she isn't leaving of her own accord. Rather, she was told several weeks ago that "The Bev Smith Show" would no longer be offered to radio stations by American Urban Radio Networks, a Pittsburgh-based media company that produces news, entertainment, sports and information programming for urban radio audiences.
Officials at AURN say simple economics are behind the decision to pull the plug, but Ms. Smith says it's not that simple.
"I see it as about being a certain age and gender," she said in an interview Friday. "If you've ever listened to me, you'll know I'm not afraid to tackle the truth. Is this something about black women's voices? Because there are no other black women nationally doing what I'm doing."
That may be true, but Jerry Lopes, president of program operations and affiliations at AURN, said that the decision to stop distribution of "The Bev Smith Show" was one of "several expense reductions made in response to declining ad revenues and a sputtering economy."
Besides discontinuing the production of Ms. Smith's show, which she started in 1998 in Maryland before moving back in 2001 to her hometown of Pittsburgh, AURN also terminated the company's longtime director of news, Tene Croom, he said, noting that he'd hired both Ms. Smith and Ms. Croom, "so this decision has been especially painful for me."
According to numbers supplied by Mr. Lopes, 88 percent of Ms. Smith's audience on New York's WWRL-AM is over 55, and 53 percent is over 65. At WVON-AM in Chicago, 86 percent of her audience is over 65 and at WAOK-AM in Atlanta, 62 percent are over 65.
About a year ago, he added, he approached Ms. Smith, noting that her audience numbers were beyond the show's target audience of listeners between age 25 and 54.
First Published October 1, 2011 12:00 am
