| Summary: | Radio station executive Melody Spann-Cooper was born on August 4, 1964, in Chicago, Illinois. After earning her B.A. degree in criminal justice from Loyola University in 1987, she joined Chicago's WVON as a radio personality in 1980, following in the footsteps of her father, disc jockey Pervis "the Blues Man" Spann. At WVON, one of the nation's few African American talk radio stations, Spann-Cooper rose from news director, to program director, to president and general manager. In 1999, she acquired controlling interest of WVON's parent company, Midway Broadcasting, in a sector in which minority ownership of commercial stations had fallen since 1996. Under Spann-Cooper's leadership, WVON's revenues rose from $700,000 in 1994 to $2.4 million in 2002. In addition to appearing on CNN's political debate program, Crossfire, Spann-Cooper contributed her time and expertise to numerous professional and service organizations.
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