Blacks Can Blame Selves for KACE's Loss.

IN October, many black leaders and activists in Los Angeles were enraged when Atlanta-based Cox Communications announced that it would put L.A. radio station KACE up for sale. They complained that the loss of the urban format station would deprive African Americans of a station that had provided them with vital information on their community for nearly three decades.

There is some truth in their gripe. KACE, though not black-owned at the time of sale, is the latest in the lengthening line of black-owned and "urban format" radio stations targeting a mostly black audience to change ownership and/or programming content in the past year.

According to a study on minority radio ownership by the Black Broadcasters Alliance, the number of minority-owned radio stations nosedived from 127 in 1997 to 100 in 1998. The majority of those sold were black-owned stations.

In recent years, Los Angeles has felt the impact of the decrease in black media ownership. A decade ago, there were three black-owned radio stations, KJLH, KGFJ and KACE, that served the black community. At present, only KJLH remains black-owned and black-programmed.

Rising operating costs, racial discrimination by advertisers, relentless media consolidation and changing listener demographics have made black stations ripe for the pickings of corporate broadcast syndicates. They recognize the lucrative potential of black stations to reach thousands of black or Latino consumers. They gobble them up quickly and on the cheap.

Yet beyond ineffectual complaints, the only response of black leaders and activists in Los Angeles to the decline in the number of stations is the even more ineffectual call to write letters in protest to the Federal Communications Commission.

The sale of KACE had nothing to do with sentiment, tradition, or interest in serving the broadcast needs of the black community. The sale of KACE was a business decision, period. Whoever was the first in the door with the cash got the station.

There is a useful model on how to rescue a valued black-owned media institution from extinction. In 1997, the black family-owned Sengstacke Publishing Co., which for decades owned a chain of black newspapers that included the Chicago Defender and the Michigan Chronicle, fell on hard times and the newspapers were put up for sale. Detroit businessman Don Barden was determined to maintain black ownership.

He used cash, bank loans, and stock options to purchase the chain. Barden had two goals. The first was to retain black ownership of a valued media resource and institution. The second was to make money.

He announced a plan to restructure the operations by modernizing plant facilities, upgrading the editorial and news content of the papers, and making better use of computer technology to turn them into a profitable asset.

Black investors in Los Angeles could have done the same if they had made a serious effort to buy KACE. The key to making that effort is having the vision to see that an independent black media still plays a crucial role in educating and informing African Americans on vital community issues, as well as preserving a valued cultural heritage -- black music.

That vision was sorely missing in the sale of KACE. The station was sold to Dallas-based Hispanic Broadcasting. The new owners immediately announced that it would become a Latin music station. The sale is expected to be approved by the FCC in 90 days.

When that happens, and the first sounds of Latin music and Spanish-language programming waft through the old KACE radio dial, many blacks will angrily scream that Latinos and Asians are plundering the black community of its assets. But ethnic saber rattling can't absolve them of the blame they bear for doing nothing to take financial control of an institution that gave the black community in Los Angeles a voice.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a radio commentator and the author of "The Crisis in Black and Black."