https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_2b9c44d0-182a-11e9-939a-c34f4cfe2800.html
There are talks over financial strains affecting WBOK.
There are talks over financial strains affecting WBOK.
Citing financial strains and the challenges of managing a New Orleans company from afar, the Los Angeles owners of local radio station WBOK-AM said Monday they will sell the station to a local buyer within the next month.
Bakewell Media Co., which has owned WBOK since 2006, said negotiations are ongoing in a deal that could bring changes to the news and talk radio station, which is targeted at black listeners.
The company hopes to sell the station to an owner who can help it win back national advertisers who have begun to rely on mainstream media outlets, rather than black-owned stations, to get their messages to minority audiences, said Danny Bakewell Jr.
Having a local owner would help WBOK foster meaningful relationships with local advertisers, he added. Bakewell and his father Danny Bakewell Sr., the company’s principals, are from New Orleans but live in California.
“Business is constantly changing, executives are constantly changing, and we have not been able to forge those kinds of long-term relationships that are so (vital) in the world today, particularly in media when it comes to advertising,” the younger Bakewell said.
Danny Bakewell Sr. graduated from St. Augustine High School in New Orleans in 1965 and moved to Los Angeles while in his 20s. He started a development firm, the Bakewell Co., in the 1980s.
That firm dived into the media business in 2004 with the purchase of the Los Angeles Sentinel, a newspaper aimed at black readers in Compton, South Los Angeles and Inglewood. It then purchased WBOK, long a gospel music station, shortly after Hurricane Katrina.