Re: "former" college stations

[Shawn Mamros <mamros@MIT.EDU>]

>A number of the college-affiliated stations around here are under
>legally separate ownership, including both Cambridge's only commercial
>FM and Cambridge's only non-commercial FM.  People involved with both
>stations are on this list and might perhaps speak up and tell us why
>things ended up that way.

I think I resemble half of that remark... :-)

Back when MIT's student-run AM carrier current station was looking to
obtain an FM license [footnote 1], the original thought was that MIT
would hold the license.  But, when the MIT administration looked at
what was actually required of an FCC licensee, they went back to the
station's student management and stated they (MIT) would have to have
the power to dismiss station announcers in the event of any "problems".
This didn't sit too well with station management, which wanted the
same level of autonomy and independence that had been granted to other
campus media outlets (most notably, the student newspaper The Tech).

In trying to come up with a solution to the impasse, somebody suggested
taking a look at how they had set things up a little bit further up
the river.  WHRB had, by this time, obtained their FM license, but
the licensee was not Harvard University, but rather a separate corporation
explicitly chartered for that purpose.  The folks at MIT and their
student-run station decided this was an acceptable solution, and thus
The WTBS Foundation, Inc. (later renamed the Technology Broadcasting
Corporation (TBC), after a certain call letter change took place) was born.

-Shawn Mamros
 Treasurer, Technology Broadcasting Corporation
E-mail to: mamros@mit.edu