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WRAP-AM 850 was a black-oriented radio station in Norfolk, Virginia, that served the larger Tidewater area from 1952 to 1989. ==History== WRAP premiered in September 1952, joining a select few other stations across the country that aimed to reach black audiences. Other stations included the first black-oriented station, WDIA in Memphis (founded 1948); WVON in Chicago; and WERD in Atlanta, the first-ever African American owned station. “Negro-oriented” radio stations, which later became known as black-oriented stations, featured mostly black deejays and targeted black audiences with recordings by black artists and advertising aimed at black consumers.〔William Barlow, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998)〕 As early as 1953, a newspaper article described WRAP as “the only station in the Tidewater area of Virginia which beams its programs exclusively to a Negro audience.” Still, like most black-oriented stations WRAP was white-owned.〔Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (New York: Verso Books, 2011), 328 〕 WRAP was a subsidiary of Rollins Broadcasting, owned by O. Wayne Rollins and local businessman John W. Rollins. An early station slogan that appeared in newspaper advertisements declared that the station played the “Music That Belongs to America.” In December 1978, five African American WRAP deejays asked the station’s white management for raises and were summarily fired. One of the deejays, Randy Williams, managed to issue an on-air “statement of solidarity” in protest of the firings before he was forced to leave the station. The next month, “The WRAP Fired Five” organized a public rally to protest WRAP. They called for African Americans in the area to boycott the station, citing both their unfair firing and the station’s deeper insensitivity to the black community’s needs. Philadelphia black businessman Ragan Henry bought the station in the late 1980s. In 1989, the WRAP changed its name to WBSK and sold its call letters to a North Carolina broadcaster. Shortly thereafter, management at WBSK fired fifteen employees – many of them longtime WRAP veterans – without any warning. The WBSK management justified their actions by arguing that the staffers had not yet completed a 90-day probationary period they had started at the new station and were thus subject to termination without notice.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「WRAP-AM (Norfolk)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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