RE: Boston talk / Pacifica

["elipolo@earthlink.net" <elipolo@earthlink.net>]

>Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 11:16:42 -0400
>From: "Aaron [Bishop] Read" <aread@speakeasy.net>
>Subject: RE: Boston talk / Pacifica
>
>Eli Polonsky said:
>
>>And, also due to the efforts of the News Department, WMBR airs 
>>Pacifica's "Democracy Now" program Thursdays 2-4 PM.
>
>But this raises a question in my mind, how do you work a daily hour-
>long show into a weekly two-hour slot?  

I believe he airs two days editions back-to-back.

>... this touches on a HUGE pet peeve of mine: virtually every college
>around Boston (and no doubt around the country) with a radio station 
>wants something for nothing.  By that, I mean they want all students 
>at the station, AND they want it to sound like a professionally-run 
>station.  

I don't think that MIT as an institution necessarily cares whether or not 
WMBR sounds professionally run (as long as the programming is 
within legal boundaries and doesn't get them in trouble in any way). 
They've more often than not been oblivious to programming content 
over the years, as long as nothing controversial gets back to them. 
WMBR's management does care about the sound of the station.

>But they're not willing to invest one dime in any sort of class structure 
>to encourage students to join the station and teach them what to do 
>while they're there....

WMBR is on it's own to do all that. The training is actually quite 
structured, but our on-campus encouragement and recruitment 
perpetually needs vast improvement.

>nor are they willing to realize that a radio station is a RADIO 
>STATION...not a frickin' student activity. You can slap a "student 
>activity" label on it all day long but that doesn't change the fact that 
>running a station is 50 times more expensive than any other student 
>activity.

But, MIT never asked for, or had a vision to create, anything more than a 
student activity. Essentially, over 40 years ago, MIT students acquired 
the building space for a home-made electronics project designed to 
send a small closed-circuit on-campus student radio station to the 
dorms across the river in the Back Bay with 10 watts.

WMBR's evolution as a greater Boston "radio station" since then in 
1961, including power increases, programming variety and community 
service, has all been the results of the plans, visions and efforts of the 
station staff including MIT students, alumnai and communty members, 
not MIT itself as an institution. 

They just provided a space where it could evolve and grow, though until 
very recently they continued to mostly not be aware that it was ever 
much more than that student activity electronics project in the early 
60's. 

I see WMBR's evolution as sort of a fluke that MIT didn't say couldn't 
happen, but other than providing the space, building expenses, and 
some nominal student activities funding, did not have a direct hand in. 
It was all the efforts of the membership and station alumnai.

>The chess club does not need a kilowatt of electricity every second of 
>every day for a transmitter.

MIT pays our building utilities including electricity. Does it cost that 
much to run a 360 watt transitter? (Tower gain brings us to 720 watts 
ERP).

>The street theater performers don't have to maintain $50000 of audio 
>equipment in a studio.

That's one reason why managment is trying to negotiate with MIT for 
renovation of the building ventilation system including air conditioning 
and some sort of modern heat regulating system or thermostat for the 
winter. Analog equipment can stand temperatures in the 90's and high 
humidity alternating with extreme dryness, but our digital eqiupment, 
recently purchased with our own fundraising money, is getting ruined.

Believe it or not, because MIT hasn't wanted to properly fix the heating 
system in this building, they hire carpenters to partially board up the 
building air intake vents every winter, and then again to take the boards
down every spring. Talk about high tech! They've been doing this for 
decades.

>And virtually no student group has to deal with an audience that by 
>and large is not on campus and couldn't care less about collegiate 
>concerns.

That's mostly immaterial to MIT. They never asked for a station that 
serves the greater Boston community (but they got one!)

Eli Polonsky


--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .