NOW VIEWINGRecord
HomeJourneyCollectionsStoriesPathsMusic RoomGamesExploreMapDebateNews
Explore

ENTITY · PUBLICATION / MEDIA OUTLET

WNWK / WPAT brokered Caribbean hours

Probable

Rather than owning a frequency, Caribbean broadcasters in the New York area bought blocks of airtime on stations that sold it. Gil and Pat Bailey's Gil Bailey Show ran this way through the 1970s on WPAT and WNWK, reaching Jamaican, Trinidadian and wider West Indian listeners across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut at a time when mainstream American radio shunned the region's culture.

Brokered time is the reason so much diaspora broadcasting leaves no station-level trace: the show was the institution, not the licence.

No photograph yet — add one you hold the rights toOpenly licensed or your own work. We publish the credit and the licence beside it.

At a glance

Confidence
Probable
Sources
Gil Bailey biographies and obituaries; Caribbean press.

Coverage areas

Diaspora & global influence

Tap a tag to explore related records across the atlas.

Share a memoryWrite it, say it, or send a photo.Correct this recordA date, a name, a spelling we got wrong.Add a source leadA flyer, tape, article or photograph.

Connections

In stories

Story · ProbableGetting on the radio

For fifty years the surest way to hear Jamaican music was not to turn on a Jamaican radio. This is how that changed — and what it cost the people who changed it.

Share this record

WhatsAppXFacebookEmail

Compiled and researched by The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk. The sources that informed it are credited above.

Share it freely. Quote it, teach from it, print it, put it on your own site — all we ask is that you credit The Jamaica Music Atlas music desk and link back where a link is possible, so the next reader can follow the trail to the sources. If you publish something built on this, tell us and we will link to you in return.