Wayne K. Brown, a longtime executive with Radio One Atlanta and one of the most influential African Americans in the nation's broadcast industry, died Oct. 6 after a battle with liver cancer. He was 55 years old.
BET News reports that he was remembered this weekend in Washington, D.C., the city where he grew up:
Speaker after speaker at the Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Maryland, painted a portrait of a man dedicated to excellence in communications and to helping the next generation of broadcasters.
Brown's story was one of incredible persistence in business, characterized by his having once parlaying a job as a security guard at CBS in New York City into a role as one of the network’s leading sales executives in the radio division. He spent 13 years at CBS Headquarters in New York City.
He left New York to serve as president and general manager of CBS Radio’s urban "Power 98" WPEG in Charlotte. He became deeply immersed in the civic life of Charlotte, before moving to Atlanta.
He served as the marketing manager for Radio One, the nation's largest radio broadcasting company that targets African-American and urban listeners. He worked in that position from 2000 until 2008, when he started his own business, WKB Enterprises, a company that focused on new media and brand marketing …
Read more at BET.
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