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OEven by the megawatt standard of Washington’s black-tie social

scene, the celebrity current coursing through the JW Marriott Hotel on

an August evening in 2006 was kinetic. Music superstars and moguls

from Janet Jackson and Aretha Franklin to Russell Simmons mingled

with corporate titans and the media elite at this can’t-be-missed event

where Beyoncé was the headliner. Even Bishop T.D. Jakes was on

hand to open the program with a prayer. They had all gathered to help

cap off the yearlong silver anniversary celebration of broadcasting

giant Radio One, a pioneering Black-owned business founded 27

years ago by Catherine L. Hughes. “How proud I was to see Diddy,

Jay-Z and Jermaine Dupri all tuxedoed down,” she recalls, her voice

filled with a gravitas forged by years behind a mic—and perhaps by a

profound understanding of just how high the stakes are for Blacks

who make it to the top.

Resplendent in a strapless silk gown, matching wrap, and pearl and

diamond choker, the broadcasting legend buzzed about amid the

A-list throng, her blond hair coiffed to perfection, enchanting guests

and issuing last-minute instructions. Hughes may have been the guest

of honor, but the role of host came naturally. Though she built the

country’s largest Black-owned broadcasting empire and is the first

Black female chairperson of a publicly traded company, Cathy Hughes

is best known to millions of African-Americans as a talk show host. For

14 years, she raised consciousness—and raised hell—on her

D.C.–area local radio show. With the expansion of her company

With more than 60 AM and FM stations and a cable channel,Cathy Hughes,chairTHE POWER OF ONE

BY JOHNNIE L.ROBERTS PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID BURNETT

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woman of Radio One and TV One,reaches more than 50 million African-Americans

Cathy Hughes was photographed exclusively forESSENCE, July 11, 2007, at theFrederick Douglass Museumin Washington, D.C.

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into cable television’s TV One three yearsago, she has also posed the questions Blackfolks want answered in one-on-one chatswith such notables as Barack Obama, SpikeLee and Chris Rock.

Hughes will need to leverage her con-siderable influence to help steer hercompany through complex businesschallenges. The media marketplace ismore competitive, as Web-based outletsand devices such as cell phones and iPodsadvance in the war for ears and eyeballs.Ratings and revenues are down. And thefirm has faced the sort of thorny financialreporting problems that plague some ofAmerica’s largest companies.

But failure has never been an option forCathy Hughes. Ever since she purchasedher first AM station, Washington’s WOL, in

1980 and went on to build the nation’s seventh largest radiobroadcasting company, she has been challenged by hardships—from broken marriages to single parenthood to homelessness.“People just think Cathy was always the wealthy lady who couldfly where she wants and do what she wants,” notes fellow mediapioneer Earl Graves, publisher of Black Enterprise, of Hughes,who earned $643,574 as chairwoman last year. “But she was pre-pared to make major sacrifices for her vision.” Hughes simplystates, “Tough times spell stress for some people. I see an oppor-tunity to learn and grow.”

A BOOTSTRAP MENTALITYHughes’s independent approach to life almost seems a matterof DNA. In 1909, her maternal grandfather founded the now

2,200-acre Piney Woods Country LifeSchool in rural Mississippi, one of only ahandful of surviving Black boardingschools. Her defiant mother, once a PineyWoods student, fled its “Christian envi-ronment” and the school’s all-femalegospel orchestra to play swing music,eventually ending up in Omaha marriedto Cathy’s father, an accountant whopreached self-reliance. As a child, Cathyintegrated Omaha’s Catholic girls’ school,which later tried, but failed, to discourageHughes, a member of the NAACP YouthCouncil, from inviting her White friendsto join her at demonstrations.

It was for her ninth birthday that herparents presented her with a red transis-tor radio, opening up a new world to herand igniting her broadcasting dreams.

She could pick up the floating stations that played Black musicand DJ Wolfman Jack, she recalls. “I could hear Black radio forthe first time.” Then, at 16, she became pregnant. Defying hermother’s urging to get an abortion, she gave birth to AlfredLiggins III after marrying his father. Divorced by age 18, shefinished high school and two years of college, studying busi-ness administration, before landing a job at the local Blackradio station.

In 1972, Hughes caught her first big break with Tony Brown,the pioneering Black broadcast commentator who was thenestablishing Howard University’s School of Communications.He hired her, and before long, she hit her stride at the campusradio station, WHUR. Howard dispatched her to Harvard andthe University of Chicago for two summers to attend seminars

THE POWER OF ONE

Hughes taught her son,Alfred, the business atan early age.

Hughes acquiredWOL in 1980.

Cathy enjoys an afternoon with dad,Bill Woods, Sr., andmom, Helen.

Nelson Mandela met withthe radio mogul after his1990 release from prison.

Music mogulQuincy Jones

joins Hughes in1996.

“Having overcome hardships—from divorce to single parenthood to homelessness

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 | E S S E N C E 205

on the broadcasting business, and she applied those lessonswell. Within two years, after fueling a tenfold rise in revenues to$3.5 million, she was running WHUR.

Most of the women she knew then were like her: single Blackmothers who spent many Friday nights alone. “So many of uswere unattached,” Hughes says with a sigh. So she programmedmusic “to keep them company,” a late-night block of airtimesaturated with sensual crooners like Marvin Gaye and BarryWhite. She called her now-ubiquitous idea “The Quiet Storm.”Radio stations nationwide replicated the format. But Howardbarred Hughes from licensing it, a decision that would latermean the loss of a fortune in fees that copycat radio stationswould have been required to pay. “I was like, ‘If God ever blessesme with another billion dollar idea, I don’t want anyone havingthe ability to say no, thank you,” she says. It was that lesson thatfueled her desire to become her own boss.

After a brief stint at another local station, Hughes and sec-ond husband Dewey, a television producer, set their sights onWOL. (Dewey Hughes, portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and radio

station WOL figure prominently in last summer’s biopic Talk toMe, starring Don Cheadle.) Broadcast regulators were forcingthe sale of the weak-signal AM station in Washington, locatedon a block plagued by junkies. Spurned by 32 banks, the cou-ple finally scored a loan at Chemical Bank, and, with $100,000of their own and investors’ cash, purchased WOL in 1980 for $1million. She and Dewey later divorced, and the station lostmoney for almost seven years.

But today WOL, fueled by the success of her talk show andher ability to demonstrate to advertisers the drawing power ofBlack radio, has multiplied into more than 60 stations reach-ing 14 million listeners weekly across the nation’s top 19 mar-kets. Last year Radio One generated revenues of $367 million.The company’s blistering expansion included the purchase of

12 stations in 2000 for $1.3 billion—a deal that broke the pre-vious $1 billion record acquisition for an African-Americancompany set in 1987 by the late buyout king Reginald Lewis.

DRIVEN TO SUCCEEDBack in those postdivorce days when she was running the busi-ness on her own, Hughes faced a number of growing pains. Sheworried that her lead investor favored BET, another company inhis portfolio. Many advertisers were reluctant to buy time slots.But Cathy Hughes had “tenacity, drive and determination,” herson, Alfred, says. To lure advertisers, she had to prove she hadthe power to draw consumers. She promoted, for example, aSaturday morning car clinic for tire rotation and oil changes. Onone occasion, hundreds of listeners showed up, several of whomended up buying cars. But once lenders were willing to give herthe capital needed to grow her business, they also wanted todictate how she should run it. They didn’t believe Black folkswould tune in to talk radio.

Hughes compromised on the station’s format, changing over

partly to music. But the talk segments she insisted on keepingbecame her big breakthrough. She hosted a morning showfocused on community issues that was an instant hit.

THE VOICE OF BLACK AMERICA Cathy Hughes has made history, amassed an eight-figure for-tune and had a profound impact on the African-American com-munity by fiercely aligning her business’s interests with thoseof Black people. Awareness, activism and advocacy have alwaysbeen central to her mission. “Radio One has been out there infront every time a major civil rights issue arises,” says DavidHonig, media and telecom civil rights advocate and longtimeHughes friend. “When equal opportunity employment, affir-mative action, school desegregation come up—when there’s

Hughes strategizes withmembers of the RadioOne board.

For her show, TV One on One,Hughes talks to Senator HillaryClinton and CongressmanCharles Rangel.

—Hughes says,‘Tough times spell stress for some.I see an opportunity to grow.’ ”

.

a Supreme Court decision pending and an industry brief needsto be filed—not only has Cathy stepped forward to help, she’sstepped forward to take the lead. She’s rounded up the moneyand the support.”

During the years that her radio show aired, Hughes was noto-rious for mobilizing the D.C.–area Black community in protestagainst corrupt Washington power brokers and media elite.Activist Dick Gregory, who was Hughes’s on-air sidekick foryears, recalls a controversial 1996 exposé in the San Jose MercuryNews that linked the rise of the crack cocaine epidemic in BlackAmerica to the CIA. “The Washington Post, they wouldn’t touchthe story,” he remembers. “So we announced on the show thatwe were going to the Washington Post, and from there we weregoing to the CIA headquarters to protest.” Hundreds of demon-strators dumped bags of flour, symbolizing cocaine, on the CIApremises. “Cathy wasn’t with us when some of us got arrested,”he continues. “She got on the radio the nextday and said, ‘Dick Gregory’s in jail. We’regoing to get him out.’ Thousands of peopleshowed up at the station [intending to escortand protect Gregory upon his release]. Tohave that kind of power in the capital of themost powerful country on the planet… shewas the queen here.”

Even the Reverend Al Sharpton, a manwho knows how to make noise in the com-munity, admires Hughes’s ability to engagethe masses. “With one phone call, CathyHughes can affect the lives of millions ofBlack folks,” he says. To wit, his latest pulpitof choice is a show on her cable network.

TURNING OVER THE REINSHughes has always been big on preparing thenext generation. She proved this on a brightSunday last May when she addressed the

graduating class of Morgan State University in Baltimore, not farfrom Radio One’s headquarters in Lanham, Maryland. She urgedthe class to pursue “nation building: a vast network of individu-als and institutions…that looks after itself, nurtures itself, feedsitself, clothes itself, houses itself and educates itself.” Partying,she added, “should not be allowed to impede the hard work ofnation-building that is the legacy of our ancestors and the des-tiny of our descendants.”

As one who has a significant legacy to pass along, Hughesmade sure her only child was well prepared for its stewardship.Ten years ago, she ceded the vision of Radio One’s future to herson, Alfred Liggins III, who took over as CEO. Liggins had grownup at WOL, arriving after school to do his homework at mom’soffice and often eating dinner there. Unwilling to let the longhours she spent building her company take away from her timewith her child, Hughes bought him his first tux at age 8 so that

he could go with her to black-tie affairs. After graduating fromhigh school, Alfred headed west to Los Angeles to work for arecord label. “The radio business wasn’t very sexy,” he recalls.But when he found himself between jobs, his mother coaxedhim back to WOL. At the time, Hughes needed the help. Shehad lost her home and was living in the station, which becameAlfred’s home, too. Now “there were two of us focused on sur-viving,’’ he says. She taught her quick-study son the business ofselling ads, and he excelled. Later she encouraged him to pur-sue a Wharton MBA.

Today the 42-year-old chief executive is transforming thecompany. “It was always my goal to build a Black media compa-ny…to be in all facets of urban entertainment,” Liggins says. InJanuary he expanded into publishing by buying the urban mag-azine Giant and has purchased a majority of Reach Media, par-ent of The Tom Joyner Morning Show and BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Liggins was also the driving force behind the creation of TVOne, perhaps the most credible alternative to the pioneering BETto date. Radio One, which owns nearly a 40 percent stake in TVOne, launched the network on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthdayin 2004 with partners Comcast, the top cable operator, andDirecTV, the satellite broadcast giant. It reaches almost 40 mil-lion homes through cable and satellite TV, roughly half of BET’sreach. Unlike 27-year-old BET, with its youth-skewing audience,TV One is aiming for adults, with an array of lifestyle and enter-tainment programming, including gospel, movies, originalshows and classic series such as Good Times and Amen. Hugheswas buoyed by the audience size for a recent rebroadcast of thehistory-making miniseries Roots. “It was the highest ratingsthat we had ever gotten,” she says.

But as a start-up, the network isn’t yet contributing to RadioOne’s financial performance. In fact, it and [continued on page 254] C

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THE POWER OF ONE

CEO AlfredLigginsshares aviewpoint.

“With one call,Hughes can affect the lives of millions of Black folks.”—Rev.Al Sharpton

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some of the other newer ventures remain a drain. “Those areventures that take initial investments before you see a real pay-off,” says Wall Street analyst David Bank of RBC Capital Markets.

Even though Hughes has handed the reins over to her son,she remains Radio One’s most revered and influential figure,serving in so many roles she’s hard to pigeonhole. She tapes hershow, presides over board meetings, and even goes along onsales calls when it’s time to close a major deal. “I’ve run thecompany for ten years,” Liggins says. “She likes to say her job ismanaging me, and hers is harder than mine.” Describing hermanagement style as “maternal,” Hughes says she’s aware thatbehind her back the staff calls her Big Mama. “When you workin a family business, there are all kinds of unique dynamics,”says Liggins. “On a number of occasions, my mother and I havegotten frustrated with each other. But we’ve always workedthrough the issues. I joined the company in 1985. So that’s what—22 years? It’s been a great partnership.”

Hughes and Liggins retain overall control of Radio Onethrough “supervoting” shares, which grant them majority-voting rights in company affairs. Based on their combinedstock holdings alone, the family fortune (which fluctuatesalong with the stock price) totaled $60 million as this articlewent to press in August.

DEALING WITH STATICIn April, Hughes turned 60—in her words, “the start of the fourthquarter” of life. Ironically, the present—a time seemingly ripe forsavoring triumphs—is one of those learning opportunities bornof adversity, perhaps like no other since the company’s troubled

early years. Traditional radio is out of tune with iPod America,where music and video come on multiple “platforms,” from cellphones to video games. With listeners and advertisers fleeing,radio broadcasters across the industry are barely growing, stalledor declining, along with their stock prices. At the same time,Radio One is taking a demographic hit as well. The explosivegrowth of Hispanic radio in its largest market, Los Angeles, whichonce accounted for up to 15 percent of the company’s business,is biting deeply into Radio One’s ratings, resulting in a dispro-portionate strain on overall company revenues.

Moreover, as one of the rare African-American–controlledcompanies listed on a stock exchange, Radio One is beset withthe kind of complex accounting problems that are cropping upamong Fortune 500 companies like computer maker Apple,builder KB Homes and managed-care giant United HealthGroup, but are alien to the vast universe of small Black-ownedprivate companies. Last June, Radio One restated its financialsfor a six-year period, reducing profit by about $10.1 millionbecause of inaccuracies in recording stock options in thoseyears. The company had “backdated” the options, a form ofcompensation, allowing certain employees to net higher prof-its when the stock is sold. The practice can violate securitieslaws and accounting rules when it is not disclosed to share-holders. At least 140 other companies are under investigationby the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the samepractice, and so far one Silicon Valley CEO has been convictedof wrongdoing.

Due to the accounting irregularities, Radio One also ran afoulof the SEC for missing a critical deadline for filing last year’sfinancial statement. Consequently, the NASDAQ Stock Marketwarned Hughes’s firm that it was in danger of being delisted. Thecompany has since filed the financial statement—an importantstep, along with the earnings restatement, toward diffusing theproblems. It is also replacing its top financial executive. Hughesis strategizing further with the board, CEO Liggins and key exec-utives to turn the situation around.

“THE FOURTH QUARTER”On a sparkling afternoon last spring, Hughes stayed at hersecluded estate on the Chesapeake Bay to putter in her gardenbefore an evening out with the man in her life. Harpist andgospel recording artist Jeff Majors, her partner of 17 years, is 7years her junior. She describes theirs as a “ying and yang” rela-tionship. The host of a gospel show on TV One, Majors is agrounding presence in her high-voltage world.

Those with whom Hughes works most closely say she rarelyslows down. But her monthlong hiatus in April was an excep-tion. Liggins treated her to a grand birthday celebration, jettingher and her closest friends to Necker Island, a 74-acre ultra-private hideaway owned by Virgin Group billionaire Sir RichardBranson. This $46,000-a-night elite retreat, the Caribbean play-ground of Oprah Winfrey, Mel Gibson and other celebs, canaccommodate up to 28 in Balinese-style luxury villas. Hughessays it was an unforgettable experience. But she’s now ready toget back in the game. “I have to keep reminding myself that thefourth quarter is the quarter in which you win,” she says. “I’mpraying for double overtime.” [Johnnie L. Roberts is a staff writer at Newsweek who covers the

media business. He lives in New Jersey.

THE POWER OF ONECONTINUED FROM PAGE 206

Hughes is looking tobroaden her media mix to include more TV and Web offerings.