According to Cathy Hughes, Howard University would’ve been fully financially self-sufficient today if they would’ve made two decisions...

She explains that in the early days of SOC (1970s), she sat as a sales manager on the first faculty board under Tony Brown along w/ Quincy Jones and Mario Van Peebles. She eventually was promoted to General Manager of SOC/WHUR.

Now, she claims HU administration f’d up by not agreeing with her plan of partnering with multiple Black professionals (dentists, physicians, etc.) in the DMV area to play the station in their offices.

She conducted a survey asking local Black owned practices if they would agree to support the plan. 88% of the Black professionals she reached out to agreed they would participate. The survey gained the highest rate of support the station had ever seen at that point.

During her time at HU, Cathy Hughes created an R&B/Soul radio format named “The Quiet Storm”. HU failed to license the format after Hughes requested that they do so. The Quiet Storm became very successful and ultimately generated billions upon billions of dollars in revenue.

She points out “Howard is not an HBCU. It’s a land grant college that receives direct federal funding”. I disagree that federal funding fully excludes Howard from being considered an HBCU. I thought an HBCU just had to be a school for Black folk established before 1964. But ight.

She believes that if Howard allowed her to license The Quiet Storm and partner with Black practices and businesses within the DMV area, Howard would be a self-sustaining institution to this day. I believe her .

There was no purpose for this thread. I just thought it was some interesting tea that I heard on this podcast episode my sister sent to me. It just further proves how much farther we could be if trust our own resources. Will always love my school, but Howard be fumbling the bag .

Here’s the link to the episode. https://open.spotify.com/episode/56FVtn2kfNKJgKPP2e3QZD?si=U1r3C5sxRD-HlmpUYJRZwQ