Access Atlanta > Entertainment > Radio Talk > Archives > 2008 > November > 03 > Entry
11/3: Whatever happened to… Carol Blackmon and Mike Roberts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ABOVE: A recent headshot of Carol Blackmon.
ABOVE: Mike Roberts (left) at a going-away party for outgoing Radio One GM Wayne Brown over the summer. That’s Derek Harper, who runs Praise and Grown Folks, on the right.
Here’s a story I wrote for the print edition Monday about the morning show that dominated Atlanta in the 1990s: Mike Roberts and Carol Blackmon from V-103:
Before Frank Ski and Wanda Smith, V-103’s big morning show was Mike Roberts and Carol Blackmon.
From 1990 to 1998, the pair connected with fans via daily call-in polls, interactive games such as “Battle of the Sexes” and gobs of community support. “We stuck to a simple premise: educate, entertain and inform,” Roberts said.
But growing competition from other R&B and hip-hop stations took a toll on ratings. In September 1998, Blackmon quit the station, saying she wasn’t treated fairly by management.
Roberts voluntarily ended his run at V-103 a month later, to accolades and respect from listeners and peers.
“I could have stayed on and reinvented the morning show,” he said recently. “But my head wasn’t there at the time. And I didn’t want to become one of those 50-year-old guys trying to sound hip.”
Since then, the pair has gone separate ways. Roberts, now 51, has focused on running and owning radio stations in Macon. Blackmon, 50, has been doing a variety of different jobs, including voiceover work such as ads for Publix and BMW, artist development, media training and TV host for the Georgia Lottery.
Neither has been back on air as radio hosts in Atlanta. For Roberts, it’s by choice. For Blackmon, the right deal has never come along.
The lottery work, Blackmon said, “keeps my chops up, keeps my face out there and keeps me in the industry.”
She also is a stage mom and manager, helping her 12-year-old son, Sterling, get work doing print ad modeling for Macy’s, TV commercials and film. He played Queen Latifah’s son in the recent film “Mad Money.”
Roberts, in the meantime, spent years building four Macon radio stations: one hip-hop, one R&B oldies and two gospel ones. By 2001, he said he was starting to break even, but a rival hip-hop station came into town with a stronger radio signal and lower ad rates.
He tried to hang on, paring staff and cutting costs but sold three of the four stations in 2006. He now owns a single R&B oldies station Majic 100, splitting his time between Macon and Atlanta.
“I sold them for more than I paid for,” he said, “but I invested so much into them that it’s hard to say I actually recouped my money.”
Why R&B oldies? “It’s the music I grew up with,” Roberts said. “I have a lot of passion for it.”
Blackmon and Roberts don’t see each other often, but they have warm memories.
“I still have very fond thoughts for Carol,” Roberts said. “It’s unfortunate our schedules are so crazy we don’t talk more. But when we do, it’s always a good conversation.”
Comments
By winkie
November 3, 2008 11:41 AM | Link to this
Wow, Carol looks GREAT!
By Mike and Carol Come back Please
November 3, 2008 12:51 PM | Link to this
Please bring them back. Intelligent entertainment is sorely missed.
V-103 was so enlightening during that time. To see what it has become is a shame.
Ghetto antics from Wanda Smith, hypocritical Frank-Ski and that man thing called Miss Sophia.
It is an embarrassment to Atlanta and the proud history of people that this town is known for throughout the world. A disgrace.
All for the love of money. Sad and a true example of selling out.
By Harold
November 3, 2008 1:29 PM | Link to this
Agreed Mike and Carol Come back Please. Tomorrow we are voting and many people are voting for change and in a time when a black man could be President of the United States of America, you have black people at one of the biggest stations in town using poor grammar regularly and trotting out a dude in a dress to make people laugh…and being paid to do so.
Miss Sophia is a slap in the face to a real broadcaster like Mike Roberts and an insult to black men both gay and straight in the community.
We have a vehicle to shape our own images and this is what we use it for? It’s just awful. Change is not just for tomorrow it is hoped to be forever and that morning show is a roadblock to progress.
By tnecvolfan2001
November 3, 2008 10:12 PM | Link to this
what memories i have of mike roberts in the morning. it was the show i was listening to the day i moved here. i was on I-75 southbound literally stuck in my first atlanta traffic jam of many to come. and v103 was on my radio and its been on ever since that fateful day in october 1988.
By EFloyd
November 7, 2008 1:51 AM | Link to this
I live in the Macon area and I wasn’t aware that Mike Roberts sold all but Magic 100.
The gospel stations were weak AM signals and there was already competition in that field here (still is) And that Hip-Hop station 107.1 was a great smooth-jazz station that actually had more real jazz and even some blues programing on the weekends. When Mike Roberts took it over we lost a great station and many here regretted it being changed to Hip-hop.
Macon has at least 4 hip-hop stations. Way too many.
The R&B oldies station is “ok” at best. We know the DJ’s are not local and they are satalite delivered and sadly, its signal is too weak for most of us who live on the south side of town.
I understand this is a tough business but we do wish for more local content here. Local LIVE personalities and a wider library of music to listen to.