The second studio, a master control room, will "allow great versatility in engineering," says Kagan. To be completed by spring, the new room will house an $11,000 RCA console, new turntables, new tape machines, and will provide space for one or more announcers and an engineer. The $5000 needed for the new equipment was raised by a WHRB fund drive last spring.
"We're even going to replace those big, fat microphones we've been using since the '50s," remarks Kagan.
The big, fat microphones give a notion of what it must have been like back in the '40s, when a couple of electronically-minded Harvard students founded the station. Barol narrates with gusto stories from the station's past.
Some are pretty juicy, like the time back in '69 when Robert Luskin '72, a scared freshman reporter, was on location during the student takeover of University Hall. "He was there for the tear gas and club swinging," Barol recounts.
On the air live, Luskin's voice choked with tear gas as he cried, "Somebody's about to pull my plug!" Somebody did indeed pull his plug--a University policeman--but he was valiantly back on the air within three minutes. The day ended when he and five other WHRB staffers were carted off to prison.
Another incident took place in 1960, shortly after John F. Kennedy's election to the presidency, while he was in Boston giving a press conference. Two intrepid WHRB reporters, at the conclusion of Kennedy's remarks, had the foresight to leap into the back of his cab, ignoring the protests of Secret Service men. The reporters fortunately had one of the early portable tape recorders with them. Kennedy was so taken aback by their pluck that he submitted to an interview all the way to the airport.
These days the scene down in the basement of Mem Hall is bustling. The pigeon-holed mailbox is crammed with as many as 30 to 40 new releases from major record companies each day, to be perused by the programming directors of WHRB's rock, jazz and classical music departments. There is ambitious talk of building a remote-control transmitter in Medford, which would increase the potential listenership by several thousand. WHRB executives themselves exude professionalism and self-confidence.
Impressive? Certainly. But whether WHRB's avant-garde programming is pleasing its audience is still unclear. A female undergraduate commented that one night she couldn't find WHRB on her radio and switched the tuner futilely for several minutes. Suddenly, she said, she came upon some "very strange" rock music.
"I knew it was WHRB," she smiled.