LITTLE ROCK BOARD WARD 6 DIRECTOR DORIS WRIGHT SHUT DOWN CITY AFFILIATED RADIO STATION OVER DISPUTES CONCERNING PROGRAMMING - IT WOULD BE HER WAY OR NO WAY
Posted September 18, 2017. Edited September 24, 2017
Director Doris Wright, the Ward 6 representative on the Little Rock Board of Directors, has used a city affiliated radio station and a city funded publication, the West Central Community Magazine to get and keep her face and message out in front of the public.
Wright also appears to be using the West Central Community as a base of operations since she left employment with the Department of Human Services under sketchy circumstances (A FOI request response from DHS for her personnel file contains no documents regarding her separation or termination of employment; no DHS-1161 Form/ Request for Personnel Action, which is a required form for employees that quit, transfer, retire or get fired) and her personnel file appears to have been scrubbed. DHS can not explain why there is no record of Wright's departure from their agency. And the only possible explanation they gave is so ridiculous that it will be covered in a seperate post on our Bad Arkansas Department of Human Services blog in the coming weeks.
Max Brantley, the editor of the Arkansas Times made reference to Wright in the daily video his publication posts on their website, blog and social media pages and an article that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Arkansas Democrat- Gazette.
You can view the segment about Wright in the video clip posted below.
This is the article that Brantley mentioned.
Wright was pissed off that KWCP station manager Kwami Abdul-Bey decided to kill a show Wright was behind, The Wrighteous Hour, in favor of programming that featured area youth. Wright was also upset that Abdul-Bey advised her that due to her involvement with the radio station, he would have to offer anyone that ran against her in the next election equal time on the station. Even thought the John Barrow Neighborhood Association's name was on the stations license, Abdul-Bey never met with anyone from that organization (other than Director Wright prior to or during his tenure as an employee).
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| KWAMI ABDUL-BEY |
That show was produced by LeRon and Stacey McAdoo, both teacher at Little Rock Central High School. That show was hosted by their two children and their friends/classmates at LRCHS.
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| THE McADOO FAMILY |
Wright wanted Abdul-Bey to move youth/student produced shows to the 10:00 p.mp to 6:00 a.m. slot and broadcast a syndicated show from a Boston Radio station the the slot that the youth/student shows aired.
The show that Wright wanted is Inside the Ride, which is hosted by Ralph Tresvant, a former member of the R&B group New Edition, popular back in the 1980's.
Wright views the West Central Community Center as her center and the West Central Community Magazine as her publication.
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| WRIGHT IS THE EDITOR IN CHIEF AS WELL AS A WRITER |
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| WRIGHT PHOTO BOMBS THE MAGAZINE |
This video clip from the September 12, 2014 Little Rock Board of Directors agenda meeting makes that fact abundantly clear.
It seems that funding could be used for a better purpose that for self-promotion of a city board member.
KWCP-LP was funded completely by the city of Little Rock to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.
Director Wright used the John Barrow Neighborhood Association as her front organization to get the station license.
Abdul-Bey reported directly to Director Wright until five months after the station went on the air when he began reporting to Dana Dossett, Director of Community Programs for the City of Little Rock.
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| DANA DOSSETT - DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY PROGRAMS |
When Director Wright's plans to change the direction of the station and her directives began to interfere with the stated mission of the station. Abdul-Bey as manager, pushed back on Wright's plans favoring live programing in the 6:00 a.m to 6:00 p.m. time slot.
Abdul-Bey discussed resigning over Wright's meddling with the station's programing (after all he was the manger) and Dossett considered his resignation as a done deal. When Abdul-Bey found out the extent of Wright's pressure on Dossett to get rid of him, he tried to rescind his "resignation" but Dossett refused to do so.
Abdul-Bey had used music from his own library at the station and once he was out as manager, he removed his music from the station. There was no "sabotage" of station equipment as was falsely reported and with him out of the picture there was no one that had the knowledge and expertise and to do the daily programming that was required to run the radio station and keep it on air. Abdul-Bey had provided training to individuals to operate station equipment but none of the volunteers had obtained enough experience to be able to run the station without his assistance.
The city was paying a bottom dollar wage to Abdul-Bey for his extensive experience and once he was gone, there was no one ready to jump in and take over.
Wright then hired a Dallas, TX, based public relations company, Balanced Communications, to run the station as she intended for it to be run: as a commercial radio station competing with stations like KOKY-FM.
There will be more to follow about this and poor Tom Carpenter will have his hands full the next couple of week dealing with our FOI requests.
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LR City Attorney Tom Carpenter's snarky line in the newspaper about nailing jello to a wall was parroted from Senator John McCain when he was making comments about President Obama's tax plan in a presidential campaign - "Nailing down Senator Obama's various tax proposals is like nailing Jello to the wall."