From the Station Manager...

After seventeen years of broadcasting only to the University, within the next four to six weeks WHRB will become an FM station, at 107.1 MCS., covering the Metropolitan Boston area, while the carrier current operation will continue at 550 KC. We received our construction permit from the FCC on February 21.

WHRB, located in the basement of Dudley Hall, has always been a student owned and operated non-profit commercial radio station. Legends have sprung up to the effect that our signal is "sent through the steam pipes" in some mysterious fashion; actually, the radio signal is impressed on the lighting circuit of each dormitory in the steam tunnels under the University, and these tunnels also contain the lines with which we can send a signal from such places as Sanders Theatre and New Lecture Hall back to the studio, where we can either record it for future use or broadcast it live.

Perhaps the most significant fact about the radio business is this: we work to the second, and consequently close cooperation among ten to twenty people is the sine qua non of good programing. Program material has to be ready on time, as do the announcer and controlman; advertising copy has to be changed and re-written frequently and the changes noted and incorporated into our daily "log," the schedule on which we broadcast.

Since the News Department is always spiriting away our microphones, tape recorders, and other broadcast equipment, careful scheduling is required to assure that this equipment is available at the specified time. But all the foregoing efforts are to no avail if our electronic equipment, most of which is turned on twenty hours a day, is not frequently checked and maintained. It is this sense of immediacy (and the possibility of disaster) which produces the special challenges and rewards, as well as the daily miseries, of radio broadcasting.

Broadcasting on FM won't change our programming policies noticeably; however, it will spell the end of the few singing commercials on our air, a demise which will not be deeply mourned. WHRB's programming has always been oriented toward classical music, and in fact, over seventy percent of our airtime is devoted to such music. We try to present it in something other than a haphazard fashion, and it is with this end in mind that we have ten feature programs of good music each week.

These programs present the music from a definite point of view: they may feature periods of music, the works of one composer, music for certain instruments, or operatic music. We also try to present the jazz we play in this fashion. Most of the remaining airtime is spent on lectures, forums, and the like.

WHRB presents programming which is at once educational and entertaining--tune in and be convinced.