Re: The "Ivy Network"

[umar@wcrb.com (Rob Landry)]

A. Joseph Ross writes:

>I think I vaguely remember hearing the term "Ivy Network" on either WHRB
>or on WAMF at Amherst College (Now WAMH I think) in the early 1960s.

According to David Elliott, the current chairman of WHRB's board of
trustees, the Ivy Network was a student-run national rep firm that
represented at first just the Ivy League college stations, but eventually
stations at a number of other colleges as well.  Almost all the stations
were carrier-current AMs, since the FMs at most colleges were
non-commercial.

In the early 1970s the Ivy Network faded away; AM was losing its appeal to
college-aged people, and advertisers gradually went away until at last only
Budweiser remained.  Budweiser finally pulled out around 1973, and the Ivy
Network was disbanded.

The original carrier-current WHRB continued to operate into the seventies
largely because there were national advertisers willing to buy time on it
through the Ivy Network.  When the network went away, so did the AM.
Towards the end a WHRB announcer went on the AM and offered to give a
dollar to the first person who called.  Nobody called, and the dollar was
stapled into WHRB's "comment book" along with the story of how it came to
be there.  As far as I know it's still there.  The date was some time in
1973 or 74.


Rob Landry
umar@wcrb.com

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