Neo Soul Radio Comes to Birmingham
Will they play Corrine Bailey Rae? Rememeber she doesn't know what Neo-Soul is. Cox has dropped the Black talk format in favor of “Birmingham’s Neo Soul” WENN 1320 AM. However it will be known as WENN 101.9 as the AM signal will be rebroadcasted on a translator station (W270BW ) at 101.9.
Cox Birmingham Operations Manager Kori White will serve as PD and midday personality while B. Brian will do afternoon drive. White says the artist roster on air will include: Maxwell, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo, Eric Roberson, Jill Scott, Angie Stone, among others.
You can take a listen online.
The way we see it: We published a post on the viability of a Neo-Soul format and Corrine Bailey Rae's definition of Neo-soul music. She said she didn't know what it was. Sounds like she wanted no parts of Neo-Soul.
Overall Neo-soul playlists simply do not have broad based appeal. At best Neo-Soul should be incorporated into an Urban AC playlist. So in attempt to blend in this genre of music; we created our own Pandora station. We do give credit to Cox Radio for thinking outside the box and for trying something different. At any rate you'll hear Corrine Bailey Rae on our Pandora station if she likes it or not!
It is sad that another black radio station has abandoned the talk format on FM. Atlanta had one and changed it to gospel. Now Birmingham changed their channel from talk to neosoul. I do think that black audiences like other audiences want to hear political and other talk. I guess just not enough of them chose to listen to those options.
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