Cy Bahakel

Who was Cy Bahakel?

Cy Nesbe Bahakel was an American politician. He was a North Carolina state senator and a media magnate. He was a member of the Democratic Party.

Bahakel was born to a poor Lebanese family in Birmingham, Alabama on April 12, 1919. He helped pay his way through law school at the University of Alabama by doing sports play-by-play and other announcing duties at Tuscaloosa's WJRD-AM radio, a sideline that made him question his goals to become a lawyer. He practiced law for six months, but the lure of the microphone was too strong. He and a friend put up $12,500 each and launched a radio station in Kosciusko, Mississippi. Within a year, Bahakel bought out his partner and found that one of the best investments in business was an hour spent talking to customers over a cup of coffee. He went on to build radio stations from scratch in Greenwood, Mississippi, Kingsport, Tennessee, and Roanoke, Virginia. As the era of television dawned in the 1950s, Bahakel tried his hand in this new fad as well, and founded WABG-TV in Greenwood, the Mississippi Delta's first TV station, in 1959. Bahakel later acquired stations in Charlotte, North Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, and Montgomery, Alabama.