Re: UMass football

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Joe Ross wrote:
<snip>
>I always thought it strange that WMUA has always had its own coverage of
>UMass sports, separate from any commercial stations.  What I thought even
>stranger was the large number of commercials -- oops, I mean "underwriting
>announcements."  Just what are the rules that distinguish a commercial
>from an underwriting announcement?  I couldn't discern any difference
>between the announcements on WMUA and commercials.

        WMUA was carrying UMass sports long before the commercial stations
had much interest in doing most of the sports. Even in the late '60s-early
'70s, did anyone else do all the men's basketball games, especially before
Julius Erving put the school on the map? A heavy schedule of play-by-play
at WMUA goes back at least to the '60s (you may know better, Joe, about
that). And that was long before any underwriting was allowed on non-comms.
IMO, it's great that WMUA continues to do the games.
        Also, there's a training function here. People are learning to be
play-by-play announcers. And some of them get to be pretty good and go on
in the business. I'd be interested to do a rating of the UMass community
for the UMass sports broadcasts that are duplicated by commercial stations
to see which broadcast the students tend to use. For  that matter, the
whole WMUA coverage area.
        What I'd like to know is, presuming UMass gets $$ from the
commercial broadcasters, does the administration provide any of it to WMUA
to help support its play-by-play work? I also wonder whether WMUA also
still does play-by-play on sports that the commercial stations don't cover,
such as, perhaps, soccer?

        FYI, for any WMUA alums on this list: I just received a mailing
about the station's 50th anniversary celebration next spring. It's looking
for alums, inviting people to recreate the show they once did for an hour.
One of  these days I'll dig out the letter and post something about it. I
think the 1949 date is its carrier-current start. My recollection is that
it went to FM in 1952. I know that it went from 10w to 1 kW in 1971.

 --Marty Waters
WMUA, 1970-75.

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