09-12-2021 Hall of Fame - Flipbook - Page 36
36 Baltimore Sun Media | Sunday, September 12, 2021
BALTIMORE SUN’S 2021
BUSINESS AND CIVIC HALL OF FAME HONOREE
CATHY
L. HUGHES
C
athy Hughes is not as widely known as media titans like
Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner or Oprah Winfrey. But
she should be.
Starting out as a teenager selling advertising copy at 10
cents a word for the Omaha Star, a Black-owned newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska, she has gone on to build one of
the largest and most influential media empires in America with Urban One Inc., formerly known as Radio One,
which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. It is the largest African American owned, diversified media corporation in the nation. In 1999, when she took
the company public, she was the first Black woman to run a company listed on
Nasdaq.
Today, Urban One reaches more than 80% of Black America with highly rated
radio stations in cities like Baltimore, Washington, Atlanta and Philadelphia as
well as cable networks TV One and CLEO-TV. The conglomerate also includes
Reach Media Inc., a syndication company that produces the “D.L. Hughley Show”
among others; and iOne Digital, a digital platform that offers social content, news,
information and entertainment.
“Cathy Hughes’ leadership in
entertainment is unparalleled and
has served as a model for many who
have come behind her in the industries she represents,” says Nsenga
Burton, senior lecturer in film
and media management at Emory
University. “In a world where the
term visionary is tossed around
loosely, Cathy Hughes is in fact a
visionary who helped change the
media landscape and made room
for women and African Americans
as owners where there was previously little to none. She has a legacy
that will continue to inform, entertain, influence and uplift well into
the future.”
The core of her success has
been with radio stations like WOL
in Washington or Magic 95.9 in
Baltimore, where she has applied
an old-school, community-based,
media concept she learned at the
Omaha Star from a media pioneer:
Mildred Brown, the founder of the
Black newspaper.
“I worked for her,” Ms. Hughes
BACKGROUND
Age: 74
Hometown: Omaha, Nebraska.
Current residence: Washington,
D.C., and Maryland
Education: Attended University
of Nebraska Omaha and Creighton
University
Career highlights: General manager
WHUR-FM; vice president and
general manager WYCB; founder
of Radio One, known today as
Urban One Inc.; and TV One cable
station. Inducted into the National
Association of Broadcasters (NAB)
Broadcasting Hall of Fame (2019).
Recipient of the Congressional
Black Caucus Foundation Chair’s
Phoenix Award, the NAACP
Chairman’s Award and the Ida B.
Wells Living Legacy Award among
others. Howard University School
of Communications is named in her
honor
Civic and charitable activities:
The Piney Woods School
Family: Divorced, one son
said. “She gave me my very first job.
That’s why I ended up in media.
Mildred and my father were very
best friends. As a matter of fact, my
father’s first office was actually in
the lobby of her newspaper, because
after he graduated from Creighton University with a degree in
accounting, nobody would hire a
Black accountant in Omaha. So, he
didn’t have enough resources to get
his own office, so Mildred created
an office for him in the lobby of the
Omaha Star. That’s where I got my
first job. I sold classified ad print.”
The Omaha Star was “more than
just a weekly newspaper,” Ms.
Hughes says. “It was a community
gathering point. All the community
meetings took place there. I can
remember seeing Dr. King standing
in that lobby in Omaha, Nebraska.”
And, so, when she got her first
station, WOL in Washington,
she tried to replicate the energy,
commitment, sense of community
involvement and empowerment
that she witnessed at the Star.
“All of the community activities
that I witnessed in my formative
years, I implemented in my adult
years with my radio stations,” she
says. “At all times, the lobbies of my
radio stations had activities going
on. I had individuals coming in to
share information or to drop something off for the homeless. We’d
feed the hungry and homeless at the
radio station on 4th and H Streets.
WOL stands for We Offer Love.”
Ms. Hughes said that the first
18 months she was in business for
herself, the prime interest rate shot
up to 27.5% on the million dollar
loan she took out from Chemical
Bank. Naturally, she was worried
about making it on her own after a
successful run up the management
ladder at WHUR-FM, the Howard
University station where she ultimately was named general manager.
“But a friend of mine said, ‘You
don’t have to worry. You’ll never
go out of business,’ ” she remembers. “And I asked, ‘Why do you say
that?’ And he said, ‘because you’re
more than a radio station to this
community. You’re the media hot
spot. You’re the community gathering place.’ ”
Konan, who goes by one name,
worked at WOL in the 1980s and
saw her engagement with the
Washington community firsthand.
“All of the community
activities that
I witnessed in my
formative years,
I implemented in my
adult years with my
radio stations. At all
times, the lobbies of
my radio stations had
activities going on. ...
We’d feed the hungry
and homeless at the
radio station on 4th and
H Streets. WOL stands
for We Offer Love.”
— Cathy Hughes
He played a role in it, joining Ms.
Hughes and other on-air personalities in such activities as a literacy
program titled “Reading Is Fundamental.”
The campaign took the station
owners and some of her most
widely known employees to parking lots, streets and playgrounds to
read aloud to children.
“One of the things that she always
communicated was serving the
community, especially the Black
community,” Konan, now a DJ at
Magic 95.5 in Baltimore, says. “We
would go out and do things in the
community to activate people and
show them that they had power.”
“Before we got to that corridor
on H Street, that area was drug
infested. And she went up and down
H Street to make sure Black businesses would move over there. And
we supported them,” he adds. “We
helped some Black businesses get
advertising on the radio to drive
customers to the businesses. She
galvanized the community. She
made sure they knew we were there
to help. She had a definite purpose
and she never wavered from serving
the community. She was a pioneer
in giving the community a sense of
purpose.”