BUFFALO, NY (WKBW) — Our celebration of Black History Month continues, and we look to our city's first African American radio station created 63 years ago.
7 News Senior Reporter Eileen Buckley visited WUFO on Broadway to learn how this community-driven broadcast outlet is serving inner-city neighborhoods and beyond.
You might not know there is a powerhouse of radio right inside this building along Buffalo's historic Michigan Street Corridor.
“I just have a passion for radio. Radio is the theory of mind so, we can make it be as big as we want it to be,” declared Sheila Brown.
And big is exactly what WUFO owner Sheila Brown has created with AM and FM frequencies featuring community talk and music.
“So, our goal is to really hit your mind, body, and soul. So, whether it's music, whether it's information, or just really helping our consumers in the zip codes that we service, really helping them have a better life,” replied Brown.
Brown is the first, Black female owner of a radio station in Western New York. She bought WUFO in 2013.
“When started at WUFO in 1986, It was June. I was 21 years old and that's when I knew the importance of Black radio,” Brown recalled.
The AM station can be heard across Western New York and all the way down into Geneseo, Jamestown, and across the border into Mississauga in Canada. The FM reaches the Western New York region.
“I’ve talked to people in Germany and Japan and the Midwest and the southeast and southwestern there's nothing like this in America,” reflected Lee Pettigrew, WUFO morning host.
Morning show host Lee Pettigrew has been with WUFO for 24 years and has watched their audience expand thanks to the digital world.
“We’ve always had something special. It's just that nobody knew it, but now I have gotten calls from people who turned it on because of the internet. They heard it on the internet. Wow,” noted Pettigrew.
Pettigrew and Brown explained how their community talk shows allow for an "unfettered platform".
“The medium of radio has been the connection of the Black community across America for decades,” Pettigrew said.
The biggest challenge to their broadcasts came nearly two years ago when a white supremacist killed ten members of Buffalo's east side community at the Jefferson Avenue Tops.
“All kinds of emotions went through us as a station, but we knew that we had to keep it together for our listening audience and try to sue them as much as we possibly could,” commented Brown. “It had us angry.”
Brown and her team have created a large room called Black Radio History Collective within the station. It is filled with a collection of radio history of the six decades of work they've completed at WUFO.
“Black folks think that's theirs. They claim ownership and a lot of times, that's a very good thing because they'll tell you exactly what they want. And that's what we're able to do. There’s a give and take here,” responded Pettigrew.
“My thing is to preserve the legacy of what our ancestors had already started building,” described Brown.
