Cynthia Young and Carol Blackmon are radio rivals but buddies, too
May 19, 2010, by
A freelancer Adrianne Murchison wrote this piece for Tuesday’s print Living section. I’m reprinting it here:
Last month, Carol Blackmon sat in her car reading while her son played basketball inside the Andrew and Walter Young YMCA in southwest Atlanta.
She looked up and called out, “Cynth, Cynth.”
Blackmon jumped out of the car and ran to catch up with her pal Cynthia Young (right). They don't see each other often enough, Blackmon said, but when they do it's as if little time has passed. "I look at her as my little sister and no matter what, no matter where, nothing changes, " she said.
The friendship has remained intact despite the fact the two women go head to head as midday radio personalities at competing stations. Blackmon follows "The Steve Harvey Morning Show" on Majic 107.5, and Young follows "The Tom Joyner Morning Show" on Kiss 104.1.
"I don't think we ever thought we'd be working opposite each other, " Young said.
In many ways their careers have paralleled each other. They met in their hometown of Buffalo, N.Y., in the early 1980s.
Blackmon was making a career change, moving from retail to radio. She was hired at a local station, but had no real radio skills, so she visited the Buffalo Academy of Performing Arts, a high school where there was a communications department. Young was a top student and her teacher asked her to teach Blackmon a few radio basics.
Neither foresaw radio careers that would span more than 25 years, nor that they both would get early experience at Florida stations before landing in Atlanta.
"I was like a little radio stalker girl, " Young said. "I would always stay in touch with her. She left Buffalo and was doing her thing. That gave me hope that I could do it, too."
Through most of the 1990s, Blackmon co-hosted V-103’s morning show with Mike Roberts. (Years earlier he gave Blackmon her first Atlanta radio job at WIGO-AM [1380].) When the morning show ended, Blackmon left radio for a decade. She joined Majic 107.5 in January 2009. During her hiatus, Blackmon did voice-over work and became a TV host for the Georgia Lottery.
“I felt a little bit of angst coming back because it had been a while. But when I came back, I really did feel very much at home, ” Blackmon said.
Until she inked her midday contract in 2007, Young held down a second job in accounting and operations in the hotel industry while working at Kiss.
"I would work overnight shifts at the hotel and then drive to the radio station and sleep in my car until 10, get up, and do radio till 3. I did that for years, " recalled Young, who started at the station in 1996.
Although Young's show on Kiss has been ahead of Majic in the ratings, the women say they have too much history to think of each other as competitors.
Besides, through the years they have vented to each other over radio woes.
"I don't think we ever talk about ratings, " Young said. "I know I can talk to [Blackmon] about different challenges I have. At the end of the day we know how to skirt around details if we have to, and say what's on our minds."
Blackmon and Young are among a line of prominent DJs — including the late radio icon Frankie Crocker — hailing from Buffalo. Several, such as Mike Roberts and the late Keith Pollard, settled in the Atlanta market.
"There were so many jocks from Buffalo. All of these guys seemed to have the same feel for radio, " said Ray Boyd, a former program director who was Blackmon and Young's boss at V-103 in the late 1980s. Young recalls hanging out in the station cafeteria, doggedly pursuing Boyd for a job.
The midday hosts have seen radio change over the years, moving from analog to digital sound and with an increased emphasis on the music tastes of focus groups. Blackmon remembers the days when DJs could not play music by two female artists back to back.
Reminiscing with Blackmon recently, Young said, "Remember how we used to have to slice and splice reel to reel with the little tape and the razor to edit commercials? … It was so much work."
You've got to love it, Young said.
“It’s almost like something that runs through your veins that gets you so attached to what you do, ” Blackmon added.
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About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
