Inside Black Milwaukee Radio’s Top-rated, Controversial ‘Carter-McGee Report’

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Jet Magazine April 24, 1995 via Google Books

The Carter-McGee Report

Michael McGee and Richard G. Carter on the Carter-McGee Report

It was May 2, 1994, when an influential Milwaukee call-in radio talk show hit the airwaves with a bang. It was the controversial “Carter-McGee Report” on Black-owned and operated WNOV-AM (860). And it will never be forgotten.

It all started March 23, 1994—“Nation of Islam Night” at UW-Milwaukee—when fiery black activist Khalid Abdul-Muhammad addressed a crowded Black Student Union rally. While covering what promised to be an explosive speech for Shepherd Express and New York Amsterdam News, I ran into 10th District Milwaukee alderman Michael McGee, Sr. 

Then only a casual acquaintance, I’d first met McGee early in May 1987, when I interviewed him in his office at Third and Clarke for my “Carter’s Corner” column in The Milwaukee Journal. During this encounter—which I felt might be combative due to his firebrand antics—McGee came to tears describing his hard-scrabble upbringing, service as an Army medic in Vietnam and singular dedication to working for the best interests of Milwaukee.

I was completely won over, and the result was my pro-McGee May 13 column in the Journal headlined “McGee has guts to say what needs to be said.” That same day, he called to thank and congratulate me for what he described as “the only positive publicity I’ve received in a long, long time.” 

Shortly thereafter, editor Alan Borsuk, of “Wisconsin: The Journal’s Sunday Magazine,” asked me to do an in-depth profile of McGee. But the Journal’santi-McGee top editor, Sig Gissler, wouldn’t allow it. A few weeks later—after Gissler decided not to increase my salary despite my status as a popular columnist, I left for a far more lucrative, high-profile job as an editorial writer-columnist with the three-million circulation New York Daily News, then the largest in America.

Ironically, a few years later, Gissler—then on the faculty of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism—called me at the Daily Newsasking that I give some column exposure to his personal, east-side neighborhood project. In eagerly declining, I reminded him how he out-of-hand had put the kibosh on my planned McGee profile in the Journal’s Sunday Magazine.  

Overall, my Daily News tenure was more than fulfilling, leading to exposure on local radio and national television. But it ended after five years when the paper was sold to controversial British media tycoon, Robert Maxwell, who bought-out and terminated many staffers. Maxwell later was to die at sea under mysterious circumstances. 

Verbs of Power

After returning to Milwaukee as a freelancer, I again crossed paths with McGee in early 1994, and wrote another positive column about him for the Journal. Published Feb. 7, 1994, it was headlined “McGee Needed in Milwaukee.” Again, he called me elated, and said the two of us should find a way to work together.

That happened the evening of Abdul-Muhammad’s explosive speech at UWM, when McGee introduced me to a man who financed his Saturday morning “Verbs of Power” program on WNOV-AM. As a result, we got together a week or so later one morning at the Whitefish Bay apartment of one of my girlfriends, and planned what became “The Carter-McGee Report.” 

In choosing a title, McGee said he always liked the name “The Carter-Moody Agency,‘’ located on the ground floor of the WNOV building. This was the insurance-real estate company run by my father, Sanford Carter, and my uncle, County Supervisor Calvin C. Moody. Thus, was born the dynamic, commercial-free, 8-10 a.m. Monday-Friday call-in program “The Carter-McGee Report.”

To get things started—two weeks before our first program in May 1994—I was introduced on “Verbs of Power,” McGee’s Saturday morning call-in program on WNOV. Prior to taking listener calls, engineer-moderator Homer Blow read, on-air, some highlights of my long media career resume. After he finished, McGee loudly exclaimed “Wow!”

Following its premier—featuring former Milwaukee Mayor Frank P. Zeidler—WNOV’s “Carter-McGee Report” became the best, most controversial radio call-in talk show in this town’s history, Black or white. It was better than Charlie Sykes on WTMJ, Mark Belling on WISN and garnered much higher listener ratings than a competing, longer-tenured black call-in program on WMCS-AM.

McGee, also known locally as Commander of the Black Panther Community Militia, was a firebrand activist in the mold of the Rev. Al Sharpton, my long-time New York City friend. Touting “tough talk,” our show initially was advertised on inner-city billboards and took Milwaukee by storm from the jump. 

This unlikely pairing of polar-opposite Black men—an experienced print-broadcast journalist and controversial politician-activist—was kicked-off with stories and photos in the Black Milwaukee Community Journal and Milwaukee Courier, and an appearance on Dave Berkman’s Sunday morning radio show on Wisconsin Public Radio. As it progressed, we were covered by Milwaukee magazine and by local television when we featured high-profile newsmakers.

Ratings Magic

And “The Carter-McGee Report’ was pure magic, with a 300-percent ratings increase in our time-slot the first six months—surpassing Sykes and Belling. This resulted in unprecedented coverage for a black radio show by Milwaukee’s daily and weekly newspapers. 

Our program was so influential that serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer wrote us a detailed letter from prison—verified by a handwriting expert—explaining his horrific actions. All three local TV stations sent reporters to the studio as I read the letter on-air. And Khalid Abdul-Muhammad, of the Nation of Islam, chose our show for his first public appearance after being seriously wounded by a would-be assassin in California.

“The Carter-McGee Report” featured many local print and broadcast media people and popular radio DJs Al Russell and Ron Cuzner, as well as high-profile, local and national guests of all stripes in-studio and by telephone. Following are only few of the national names:

Public TV’s Tony Brown; Rev. Calvin C. Butts of Harlem‘s Abyssinian Baptist Church; Earl Caldwell, of the New York Daily News; Sherry Carter of BET (my daughter); former New York Mayor David Dinkins; TV talk show host Morton Downey Jr.; author-poet Nikki Giovanni; James “Pookie” Hudson of the legendary Spaniels; author-columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson, and Roy Innis, of CORE. 

Jazz singer Al Jarreau; Mike Tyson biographer Jose Torres; Prof. Leonard Jeffries of City University of New York; boxing promoter Don King; author Julianne Malveaux; Jill Nelson of the Washington Post; New York talk show host-author Art Rust Jr.; Rev. Al Sharpton; middleweight boxing champion Gerald McClellan; Carl B. Stokes, former mayor of Cleveland, and Wilbert Tatum, publisher of the New York Amsterdam News.

On. Nov. 11, 1994, Milwaukee-born Jarreau, my boyhood and Lincoln High School pal, appeared live in-studio headlining our most popular program called “Music, Music, Music.” He was joined over and over in song by noted Milwaukee vocalists John Taylor and Willie Higgins, the Spaniels “Pookie” Hudson and Mel Rhyne on keyboards. The show was our all-time ratings winner. 

Guests of this quality and our fiery give-and-take with callers stunned Milwaukee and contributed to our popularity and success. As provocateur, I was strongly pro-Black and pro-McGee—and many white callers hated me. We stirred-up listeners with scathing opinions on police brutality and Mayor John Norquist, among other volatile topics. And occasionally, we did shows on-location around the black community.

Tough Talk

In addition, I issued forth daily, hard-hitting commentaries on many areas of interest, such as the daily newspapers’ skimpy coverage of black people. For its introductory theme, I chose Gene Chandler’s R&B classic “The Duke of Earl.” And listeners loved it.

The lengthy “Living in America,” by James Brown, was selected as our opening musical theme, helping give “The Carter-McGee Report” its right-now character. But best of all, it alerted listeners all over town that our two hours of “tough talk” was about to begin.

To many Milwaukee whites and casual tuners-in, Carter and McGee were a surprising radio talk show duo -- acid-tongued, yet different Black broadcasting pals who clearly liked each other, and took no prisoners on the air. We discussed hard, sobering facts of black life in the city to a broad range of Milwaukeeans, providing positive information on one hand, and pulling-the-covers-off some bad actors on the other.

Indeed, “The Carter-McGee Report” dealt in the real, not the imagined. We kicked ass and took names and did it with style. Those we offended deserved to be offended. This is the essence of thoughtful, albeit in-your-face, talk radio, run by caring men and women experienced in life. 

Unfortunately, “The Carter-McGee Report” as we knew it, which listeners looked forward to and many wished was on seven-days-a-week, only lasted until late March 1995. Its controversial, unexpected, race-based ending shocked those involved, as well as listeners who loved it.

The unfair reason was my marriage while on vacation in Hawaii to a beautiful white blonde, Susan Orr, popular Milwaukee host of “Jazz in the Afternoon” on WYMS-FM. The reason for the program’s demise—with my comments—was extensively covered in The Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Sentinel, Chicago Tribune and JET Magazine.

But regardless of how and why “The Carter-McGee Report” ended, the program was a nurturing, worthy career experience for me, that I wouldn’t change for the world.