Eddie Edwards didn't want to get back into the broadcast business.
But a conversation that the ex-owner of WPTT-TV had with the late Harvey Adams Jr., former leader of the Pittsburgh chapter of the NAACP, after the sale of radio station WAMO earlier this year convinced him otherwise.
"Here's a man on his deathbed, literally, still fighting for the community he so loved," Edwards said Monday of Adams' concern about the lack of a radio station serving the black population in Western Pennsylvania.
Edwards has filed paperwork to purchase 660 WPYT-AM for $500,000. Pending approval from the FCC, Edwards hopes to launch a news-and-talk format on the station by January 2010.
"This (broadcast power) is better than WAMO-AM ever reached," Edwards said of the 1,400-watt transmitter situated in Wilkinsburg. "The signal is second to none."
In May, WAMO-AM/FM and WPGR-AM were sold by Sheridan Broadcasting Corp. to St. Joseph Missions, a religious broadcast entity, leaving a void in stations dedicated to the black population.
"That's frightening to a lot of people," Edwards said. "I've met with literally every community leader in the last few weeks, and some major church leaders in town, who have shared their concerns over the lack of having a radio station for this sizable population. When you look at the numbers, you have to scratch your head and say, 'What the heck happened?'"
Edwards is investing between $1 million and $1.5 million in a news broadcast center in the Wilkinsburg/Forest Hills area. He is encouraging employees who were laid off after WAMO was sold to apply for jobs at the new station. Many of those employees, Edwards said, were unable to find work in local radio after losing their jobs.
"Minorities are not being hired by radio stations in this city," Edwards said. "All those people who lost their jobs, most of them would not find work in this city again unless somebody stood up to the plate."
Edwards calls the purchase of WPYT-AM the first step in bringing back a radio outlet for the black community.
The news-and-talk format, he said, will provide an antidote to concerns that have been voiced to him about the state of talk radio.
"They've said all the stations where we have talk don't have peace and talk," Edwards said. "It's all hate radio when you want to tune into some talk, and to be perfectly frank, they were pretty fed up with that type of radio."
Edwards also plans to purchase an FM station dedicated to music, although he envisions it as being different from WAMO.
"I'll let other people have the teenyboppers, if that's what they want," Edwards said, noting he plans to program R&B music. "Black adults have been ignored in this market for a long, long, long time."
