Is it time for WTBS to make a comeback on 88.1?

[Eli Polonsky]

First of all, the students who are the current management
of WMBR would have no nostalgia for the WTBS call letters.
They weren't even born yet when the call letters changed.
The student GM and PD are primarily responsible for day to
day hands-on operation of the station as per MIT policy.

Some on the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, the board
of mainly station and MIT alums that holds the license and
oversees certain long term and legal issues would certainly
remember WTBS, but I don't know how much interest there is
in actually pursuing the call letters. I know that board
members Todd Glickman and Shawn Mamros occasionally pop up
on this list, perhaps they may chime in.

Though I've been a staff member of WMBR since 1982 (just a
few years after the call change) and I remember listening
to WTBS since 1967 before that, I don't feel that it would
be advantageous at this point to pursue changing the calls
to ones that had been dropped from the station almost 30
years ago. WMBR has a few decades worth of recognition with
those calls, not only with the local and worldwide (via the
web) listening audience, but also with record companies,
club and concert promoters, and various other agencies and
organizations of all sorts.

It would also be an unnecessary administrative headache for
an all-volunteer station, as it would become necessary to
change all web and online listings, contact all agencies
and companies that correspond with the station, change all
print media containing the call letters, re-cut all on-air
station promos, and anyone who bookmarked the website and/or
audio streams would find that their URL's no longer work.

Of course, autoforwards could be set up, but that would be
even more volunteer work for someone... We currently barely
have the staff with enough spare volunteer time to keep the
station operating smoothly and maintained. I wouldn't want
to see all this added volunteer burden for something which
would essentially be nostalgia vanity for old-timers...

I'm sure that there would also be financial expenses, such
as filing fees, etc... I don't know how much those would be,
and though WMBR is not in desperate financial straits these
days, our listener donations can be spent in ways that serve
them better, for example, it's rare to listen to a two-hour
airshift on WMBR without at least one CD player failure on-
air per show...

EP