Hal Jackson
| Hal Jackson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Birth name | Harold Baron Jackson |
| Born |
November 3, 1915 Charleston, South Carolina, USA |
| Died | May 23, 2012 (aged 96) New York, New York, USA |
| Show | Sunday Classics |
| Station(s) |
WBLS - New York KGFJ/ KUTE - Los Angeles |
| Country | United States |
| Previous show(s) |
The Bronze Review WINX-Washington, D.C. The House That Jack Built WOOK-Washington, D.C. |
WBLS - New York
Harold Baron "Hal" Jackson (November 3, 1914 – May 23, 2012) was an American disc jockey and radio personality who broke a number of color barriers in American radio broadcasting.
Jackson was born in Charleston, South Carolina and grew up in Washington, D.C. where he was educated at Howard University.
Jackson began his broadcasting career as the first African-American radio sports announcer, broadcasting Howard’s home baseball games and local Negro league baseball games.
In 1939, he became the first African American host at WINX/Washington with The Bronze Review, a nightly interview program. He later hosted talk show, a program of jazz and blues on WOOK-TV.
Jackson moved to New York City in 1954 and became the first radio personality to broadcast three daily shows on three different New York stations. Four million listeners tuned in nightly to hear Jackson’s mix of music and conversations with jazz and show business celebrities. In 1971, Jackson and Percy Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president, co-founded the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation (ICBC), which acquired WLIB — becoming the first African-American owned-and-operated station in New York. The following year, ICBC acquired WLIB-FM, changing its call letters to WBLS ("the total BLack experience in Sound"). As of the late 2000s ICBC, of which Jackson was group chairman, owns and operates stations in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Fort Lauderdale, Columbia, South Carolina, and Jackson, Mississippi. The flagship station was hampered by its frequency, sharing it with WOWO of Fort Wayne, IN. After being turned down by the FCC to change frequencies, Inner City Broadcasting, in an industry un-precedented move, purchased WOWO solely to reduce its output and upped the power of the NYC transmitters to 50,000 watts daytime/30,000 watts night, and subsequently be heard full-time across the entire New York market.
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