Cathy Hughes changed Atlanta radio and continues to build her own legacy

In July 1995, Radio One acquired its first radio station in Atlanta: WHTA-FM, aka Hot 97.5. It was the city’s first hip-hop station, and it’s where artists Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges and LaLa Anthony started out as interns before becoming on-air talents and becoming household names.

Credit: Bob Andrés

Credit: Bob Andrés

Six years later, WHTA-FM became Hot 107.9, retaining its basic urban hip-hop and R&B format. Radio One became the owner of three other stations in Atlanta: Majic 107.5, Praise 102.5 and Classix 102.9.

“When Hot 97.5 came out, the culture changed,” said former Hot 107.9 personality and Atlanta native Brian “B-High” Hightower. “The on-air talent at 97.5 and 107.9 looked like us, and the music they played amplified the city. It was the gift that kept on giving.

Hot 107.9 launched other hip-hop notables like DJ Drama and Ludacris’ manager Chaka Zulu before launching a successful career in hip-hop.

“It was like a feeding program that gave us all our chops,” Hightower said.

Credit: Urban One, Inc.

Credit: Urban One, Inc.

Born in Omaha, Hughes moved to Washington, D.C., in 1971, where she became a lecturer at Howard University’s School of Communication, which was just getting started when she arrived. She said moving gave her the confidence and access she needed to seize opportunities and create them.

“I grew up in a cultural desert,” said Hughes, now 76. “I wrote to my mother to tell her that I was afraid I would have to see an optometrist because my eyes were tired from looking so much. I was amazed to be in a city where there were African Americans on television and radio doing exciting things. »

As Howard’s communications department grew, so did Hughes’ desire to join WHUR, the college’s historically black station.

She became sales director in 1973 and was promoted to general manager two years later, becoming the first woman to run a broadcast facility in the nation’s capital. It was there that she began to realize that connecting with listeners meant delivering relevant programming.

In 1976, while at WHUR, she said she came up with the idea for “The Quiet Storm,” a weekend show that played a rotation of ballads and love songs by black artists. The new format’s late airtime became a staple of black radio stations nationwide.

Hughes credits the Black LGBTQ community for embracing her early on and said she created the show to provide entertainment for students who were dateless or would rather stay home than attend. go out. “It was basically black elevator music focused on relationships, and popularity started to blossom,” she said.

She left WHUR to run another D.C. radio station, WYCB, in 1978. Two years later, she purchased her first radio station, WOL-AM, in Washington, D.C., after being turned down by 32 lenders.

She was part of Radio One, the parent company she founded that same year, which now owns and operates 57 stations in 15 markets.

Despite its innovation, the station generated no revenue. She was forced to live at the station with her son, Alfred Liggins, whom she gave birth to at the age of 17. They then moved to a trailer near their office, in a drug-infested neighborhood.

Hughes says making the station their temporary home was no different from other cultures who live in apartments above their businesses.

“Sometimes you have to feel uncomfortable doing things you’re not sure about to get to the next level,” Hughes said.

Credit: Tim Caver

Credit: Tim Caver

In 1986, Hughes created “The Cathy Hughes Morning Show,” a daily radio show that was the first to broadcast on-air news from a black perspective. A year later, Hughes and Liggins, who joined the company’s sales department in 1985, took WTKS, an AM soft rock station, and transformed it into WMMJ.

Becoming Urban One’s first profitable station, WMMJ Majic 102.3 and 92.7 were responsible for urban adult contemporary, a format created by Hughes and Liggins that combined classics with current hits.

Toni Judkins, TV One’s former executive vice president of original programming and production, was responsible for helping the cable network create different genres of shows. Now senior vice president of programming and development at Hallmark Media, she credits Hughes’ innovation with creating radio formats to guide her career.

“We had a responsibility to represent all aspects of the Black experience,” Judkins said. “It’s about taking these trends and translating them for our community.”

In 1991, Hughes created the Stone Soul Picnic, a concert series that brought veteran artists back to the stage. Going out into the community and training Liggins to run the business began to raise Hughes’ profile as a black, female entrepreneur.

“The business was so successful because he (Alfred) grew up in the station watching me,” she said. “He was fearless and daring. Harvard Business School made us a case study because our little AMs and FMs were tweety birds that could do it. People teased us that we had to drive somewhere else, but we were competing with big signals.

Credit: Chris Mitchell

Credit: Chris Mitchell

Hughes resigned as CEO of Radio One in 1997 and appointed Liggins as CEO. He took the company to the New York Stock Exchange, making Hughes the first black woman to run a publicly traded company.

Honored with the naming of an Omaha street and the Howard University School of Communication in her honor, Hughes also became the first Black woman inducted in radio into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2019.

She hasn’t finished yet. Hughes wants to produce a feature-length documentary about the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, his trombonist mother’s racially integrated swing ensemble of 18 women who performed throughout the 1930s and early ’40s. The project, estimates – she, is another opportunity to stay committed to her mission.

“Building generational businesses is difficult, and it’s particularly difficult in the African-American community,” Hughes said. “We have too many examples of generations of parents who do not prepare a succession plan. We want to be able to be there and have some little black kids look at a sign and see that we were created in 1980 in 2080.”