Network, Founded by Crimson, Finds Sex Has Radio Appeal, Severs Link to Breakfast Daily by Name Change to W HRV

When the Crimson Network decided to take on the dignified name of "Harvard Radio Network" last week, it severed the last shred of the umbilical cord that bound it to its parent organization, The Harvard Crimson. Before it was big enough to toddle about, the Network had been nourished with Crimson funds and fed upon the services of the paper's editors and bookkeepers. The broadcasting unit was not long in growing up, however, and began running its own affairs almost before the College knew it had a radio station.

The first programs were picked up in student rooms by tapping the radio to the radiators. After three weeks of such operation, a smug technician heard the station over his automobile receiver on the way home from Wellesley somewhere in the Newtons. F.C.C. has strict limits on the radiation of unlicensed stations, so the Network turned from the radiators to the cold water pipes.

The engineers bore up well under the strain of quipsters' "Your programs aren't so hot any more," but soon found that the signal still flew out to Watertown. After a brief experiment with House drain pipes, they hit on the present scheme of piping programs through the University's electric lighting system. At present, extension cords reach only into the seven Houses, but only funds and wire are lacking for Yard coverage. Technical Director T. Michael Sanders '48 expects to have the project completed some time next fall.

Back at the root of Network history is a man named Kenneth Richter, who tried to found a station in December of 1939. After floundering around without funds or University approval for several months, he went to the Crimson, interested President Spencer Klaw '41 in the project, and then vanished mysteriously from recorded history. The daily was interested in fathering the Network chiefly to keep possible advertising and news gathering competition in hand.

University Green Light

With a moral and financial boost from the Crimson, the Network got University recognition and set up studios in the now defunct Shepard Hall on Holyoke Street. Its executive board was, in the very beginning, a part of the Crimson masthead and largely peopled by Crimeds. It soon became obvious, however, that the Network was being run by Network men, and the two organizations began slipping apart in a complicated series of negotiations that came to an end only last week.

Early program directors fishing about for something to the taste of their audiences soon found that sex, as always, did the trick. The first experiment was with Ann Corio, who cooed nice things about Harvard men and not so nice ones about Yale, into Shepard Hall microphones. So successful was the program that the next week found a Radcliffe freshman, a Wellesley sophomore, a vacationing Vassar junior, and a Boston debutante comparing notes on Harvard men for the benefit of listeners.

One of the Network's prize anecdotes comes out of a coed forum on coeducation of this period. A Harvard man had just finished declaring that women get in the way and that he himself was a misogynist when his Cliffedwelling opponent chirped archly into the microphone, "Then why don't you get your hand off my knee!"

Concrete evidence of the Network's campaign for female voices to pipe into waiting College ears is Radio Radcliffe. At first the girls worked from Shepard Hall, announcing the Swing Out program every evening at 7:30 o'clock. Now they are firmly ensconced in the Field House just off the 'Cliffe quad, and a regular quota of programs is exchanged by the two stations each week.

WHCN Goes to Dartmouth

As the station grew up technically, its staff began carrying on-the-spot coverage of dances, forums, concerts, and athletic events back into the radios of students who, for one reason or another, could not themselves attend. Last fall, WHCN broadcast a play by play report of the Dartmouth football game from Hanover, and plans are being made to cover the Virginia contest next year. In 1941, on the day after Pearl Harbor, the University counted on the Network to relay President Conant's Sanders Theatre address back to men sitting by their radios who could not possibly be accommodated in the packed auditorium.

In 1945, the station found its sound-proof walls crumbling about its ears, as the University announced plans to demolish Shepard Hall. When announcers thought about the creaky floors and the local cat who crept into the studios to purr insignificantly into the microphone, they thought moving out into new quarters might be a good idea. When the business staff began adding up the costs and subtracting from the Network's bank balance, they wondered how lucky they were after all. On May 11, 1945, WHCN vacated its Holyoke Street offices in time to save its equipment from the wreckers. The University made available quarters in Dudley Hall, where the Network has tailor-made its studios and recording rooms and now awaits only a Student Activities Center to go on to better things.