I was in the studio one morning at WDBZ (1230 AM) last September when Nate Livingston was offered a regular on-air talk show gig by Program Director Lincoln Ware.
The offer was made live, on the air. It also was made hesitantly and with provisions.
It was kind of like when a parent gives the car keys to the teen-ager who, although a licensed driver, doesn’t drive that well. The parent fears the drama of the impending wreck.
And wreck, Livingston has.
Love him or hate him, you get what you pay for with Livingston. That is, if you want a bombastic personality, a confrontational air and half-cocked, look-at-me tactics, he’s your man.
He’s the “I” in the IGA of “I Get Attention.”
Presumably, that package is precisely what Ware and Blue Chip Broadcasting Chairman and CEO Ross Love wanted when they hired the man.
But now, suddenly, Livingston is persona non grata.
I was on “The Buzz” last fall to talk about this column, then just two months old.
Livingston was his typical self — trying to bait me into a debate over my choice of “Negro” in the column’s title. Also there was an underlying current of envy, as in, “Who’s this black girl with all this freedom in a white newspaper?”
He seemed taken aback that I could say what I say.
I understood where he was coming from, though. Because even though he was at a black-owned and -operated station, I could feel he was on a short leash. It was like Love was somewhere with his finger poised just above the button that would snatch open the trapdoor to swallow Livingston whole.
However true that might be, Livingston himself must own up to his current wardrobe choice of the orange Hamilton County Justice Center jumpsuit.
A few weeks after my initial appearance at “The Buzz,” I was asked back to co-host a show. By this time Livingston had publicly promised to go downtown and protest with his “brothers on the front line” over the treatment of black Coors Light Festival patrons.
This was at the onset of the formation of the Cincinnati Black United Front. Members were outraged that several downtown businesses closed during peak festival hours.
Back then, Livingston, seemingly jokingly, promised to get arrested. He did so by taking the stage during Mayor Charlie Luken’s spiel during opening ceremonies for Oktoberfest. Anytime Luken can be silenced, it is, as Martha Stewart says, “A good thing.”
I personally applauded his tactics back then — sort of a bullshitus interruptus — but his lighthearted manner didn’t just backfire. It diminished the seriousness of the Festival issue and demeaned the efforts of the “professional” protesters who burned up shoe rubber for that cause.
After that, Livingston was a fool if he didn’t know his bosses had started a growing list of his embarrassments to the station. These are new-money black businessmen — backed by smart-money white businessmen — who are as interested in being a valid voice for the community as I am in being the mayor of Cincinnati.
Not.
Because of Livingston’s arrest — as well as his outrageous (if not probable) allegations that Love brokered a deal with Luken and his other infractions, including protesting Taste of Cincinnati during a “Buzz” broadcast — he was fired.
Ware has publicly intoned his disbelief over Livingston’s “disrespect for management and ownership.” Love stands mute.
If you ask me, the three are a triumvirate of dunces who should be forced to kiss and make up. Ware is suffering more a blow to his ego than anything else. Back in the day when he was a volunteer renegade, Livingston was remaking himself in a Mini-Me image of a louder, more hostile and more street-savvy Lincoln Ware.
It’s gotta hurt when the monster you’ve built goes off and embarrasses the hell out of you.
Once the king of WCIN (1480 AM), the always-struggling bastard stepchild of local black radio, Ware is now fat, comfortable and operating on cruise control at “The Buzz.” He’s forgotten what it was like to be new at something. He could’ve gone to bat for Livingston.
Oh, the perils of damage control.
Livingston, who wasn’t violent when he commandeered the Oktoberfest stage, is serving a stiff 60-day sentence — a final, rusty nail in his self-constructed coffin.
The sentence is too stiff. What would’ve been much more appropriate is if Livingston had been sentenced to community service, something like presenting a reasonable, literate point of view on the radio for 60 days and holding his bosses accountable for their collective ineffectiveness.
Now that’s community service.
This article appears in Jul 4-10, 2001.