Mayor Mike Duggan chats with WGPR-TV station alumni prior to press conference on the station’s approval to have a historical marker at its location on East Jefferson. Standing to the Mayor’s left is Joe Spencer, RJ Watkins and Karen Hudson Samuels, all members of the WGPR-TV Historical Society. (Photo by HB Meeks/Tell Us Detroit)

First African-American-owned TV station hit airwaves 40 years ago

By Ken Coleman/Tell Us USA

Ken Coleman is a Detroit-based author and historian. He can be reached at www.onthisdaydetroit.com

DETROIT (Tell Us USA) - In a sense, black America could use the “black capitalism” days of Richard Nixon.
The Republican U.S. President met with Detroit’s William V. Banks in 1972 and offered his assistance in helping the Motor City resident to launch the nation’s first black-owned television station.

On September 29, 1975, WGPR-TV 62 signed on the air. The station was owned by the International Free and Accepted Modern Masons, which was founded and led by Banks a businessman, Republican Party activist, and former congressional candidate who was born the son of a Kentucky sharecropper in 1903.

In 2014, seven full-powered television stations come under black ownership. The Marshall Broadcasting Group of Houston, TX owns three outlets; conservative commentator and business Armstrong Williams owns four stations, including WEYI-TV, which broadcasts in the Saginaw and Flint area.

The development was largely a result of the Federal Communication Commission’s ruling that bars companies from controlling two or more stations in the same markets. A breakthrough, it reversed the downward trend in the number of stations owned by African Americans, which had hit zero in 2013.

There have been better days. As late as 2006, there were 18 black-owned stations representing only 1.3 percent of all such stations.



In 1978, the Federal Communications Commission implemented the “Minority Ownership Policy.” The effort offered tax incentives to people seeking to sell stations to minority owners. Within two years of its passage, the country went from one black-owned television station to 10. In fact, minority ownership increased five-fold under the policy. Sadly, however, it was struck down by a Republican-led Congress in 1995 thus making it nearly impossible for owners of color to hold ownership and access to the public airwaves.

In 2013, minorities owned just 6 percent of commercial television stations in the country, only 6 percent of FM radio stations and only 11 percent of AM radio stations. Now, I must point out that there are blacks who have founded television networks. Black Entertainment Television was owned by Robert L. Johnson in 1980 (now owned by Viacom). The Bounce TV network, which has operated since 2011, was founded by civil rights leaders Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III. TV One, founded by African American Cathy Hughes in 2004, is now a joint venture between Radio One and NBC Universal.

“We don’t believe anybody else can do as well presenting black culture as we ourselves,” Dr. Banks, who died in 1985, told the Associated Press in 1975.

The Masonic organization eventually sold the historic WGPR-TV 62 station to the CBS television network in 1995.

Nonetheless, we could use a willing federal government and visionary entrepreneurs like William V. Banks to increase the number of black-owned television stations in our country.

Ken Coleman is an author and historian. He writes about William V. Banks in his book “Soul on Air: Blacks Who Defined Radio in Detroit”

Ken Coleman is a Detroit-based author and historian. He can be reached at www.onthisdaydetroit.com