given station in a reported time period. In July, Blake’s numbers jumped by more than 10,000 hours. Programming mobility enables Blake to work with a nationwide staff that includes author and motivational speaker Les Brown. And the station’s global audience continues to respond. For the past six months, on the Live365.com network, Blakeradio.com has beat more than 30,000 other Internet radio stations into the top 10.
Now that he’s established an audience on six continents, Blake is about to take his faith in the station a bit further. Following the subscription model of Web giants like AOL, Blake has begun charging listeners $9.95 per month. He concedes that he doesn’t yet know how station devotees will respond. But, he adds, “No one would have believed that people would pay for television — but look at HBO today. When it comes to technology, it seems that African Americans are always left out of the mix. Usually, by the time we get into business, the market is saturated. [But] I’m pretty confident about this because Blakeradio.com has become a part of people’s lives.”