“Very seldom does somebody get to do what no one has done,” said longtime sports journalist, Rob Parker.
When that opportunity presents itself, you have to go for it. That’s exactly what Parker was facing while pondering about launching his latest venture, Sports Rap Radio.
So after letting the idea marinate for years, Parker finally decided to go for it.
Last week, he announced that he will soon launch what will become the first all Black sports radio channel in history, which will become a home for new local talent, powerful voices and nationally syndicated programming.
And what better place to launch it than in Detroit, a city that according to the US Census Bureau is almost 80% Black (77.8%) and a city that Parker called home for many years.
In Motown, Parker became the first host for AM station WDFN 1130 in 1994. Not first Black host, but first overall host, period.
It’s also where Parker forged additional roots in the city as a sports columnist and sports anchor.
So while the location for Sports Rap Radio was an easy choice, the process won’t be. But it’s a challenge he’s accepted.
“I’ve had this idea for a while,” Parker told me during our interview. “Sometimes time goes by and nothing gets done. The funding is not perfect, the advertising is not perfect…but sometimes you just have to go for it.”
There are many reasons to launch an all-Black sports radio channel, but one of the biggest is to address the lazy response many general market companies give when taken to task about hiring Black talent to fill key and/or senior roles.
“We can’t find them.”
Oftentimes, that’s because they’re looking in the same places for the same faces.
But now Rob and his business partners, BJ Armstrong, Dave Kenney and Maurice Ways are creating a destination for Black talent in sports radio to be discovered and heard.
“It’s going to be sports talk radio. We’re not reinventing the wheel,” said Parker. “But the perspectives and narratives will be different.”
Parker and his team reached an agreement with Audacy to lease WXYT 1270 AM in Detroit for the show, which is the sister station of the city’s only other all-local-sports talk station, 97.1 The Ticket.
But the relationship will be complementary according to Parker, who said that they will cross-promote programming and support each other.
Most interesting is that Sports Rap Radio is headed to AM, the broadcast format that helped launch legendary Black voices on stations such as WOL in Washington D.C. and WLIB in NYC.
For those questioning the move to AM, precedent exists. The broadcast home of the LA Dodgers is AM 570 and ESPN Radio in NYC is making the move from 98.7 FM to 1050 AM this September.
This history-making venture is a great idea and fills a void that has long existed in the space.
But will it work?
Will Black sports fans and other listeners in Detroit flock to an AM station for their local sports news? Most crucially, will advertisers support their vision?
Parker is confident that the answer to all of those questions is “yes,” simply because Sports Rap Radio gives Black Detroit sports fans a new alternative to satisfy their sports fix.
“Detroit has been listening to American Bandstand for a long time. We’re going to give it Soul Train,” Parker told me.
It was a fitting comparison that put the business in perfect perspective.
In 1970, Don Cornelius launched Soul Train as a daily show on WCIU-TV in Chicago. A year later, he moved it to LA, attracted sponsors and developed it into a nationally syndicated program that ran until 2006.
While there won’t be much dancing on Sports Rap Radio, the network’s goals are the same as those of Cornelius.
Create something no one had before and present it to audiences in an authentic way that makes them feel like they’re a part of it and can’t miss it.
For Black audiences, feeling like they’re being acknowledged and represented in the product generally leads to better engagement and support.
Look no further than the success that Deion Sanders has had at Colorado in one short year for proof.
Parker, like Cornelius and Sanders, is ready to put in the time and effort into making the station a success, and he wants to work with those who are willing to do the same and invest their sweat equity into the history-making venture.
“This is something to be built, something that takes time, but there is a pathway and a space for us,” Parker told me. “A Black sports talk radio station in Detroit? This makes sense.”
But can it work?
“It’s not impossible,” he added.
The truth is that it is possible, there is space for it and it will take lots of work to make it successful.
But Parker knows what it can become and is prepared to work tirelessly to make it a hit.
“We will connect to people in a way others don’t,” he told me. “People care about things where they see themselves.”
Starting this May (tentatively May 16th), Rob Parker will prove that Black people care about the sports discussions they hear from voices they can identify with.
And that’s when he’ll know that his sports version of Soul Train is headed in the right direction.
