Sports Archives - WPRB History

1968 Princeton – NYU Basketball Excerpt

Text: Edward Labowitz ’70

[Download Princeton / NYU Basketball Excerpt, 1968] (19.5mb MP3 File)

Gregg [Lange] and I broadcast the (Men’s, as there were no Women’s) Basketball games on WPRB during our years, 1966-1970. During freshman year, ’66-’67, the team was ranked third in the nation and was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. However, as fledgling freshmen, we did not broadcast many of the games, but watched and listened to our mentors, John Barnard ’69 and Hal Pote ’68.

We were the regular broadcasters in ’67-’68, ‘68-‘69, and much of ‘69-‘70, until senior theses began to occupy our time and our successors took the mic.

I recently found a ¼ tape of the last 18 minutes of game time of the NYU-Princeton game, in early December 1968. I transferred the tape to digital, and it is a good thing I did, because it was beginning to deteriorate. The first 1:15 is a bit garbled, but the rest is fine. I am doing the play-by-play, Gregg does a bit of color toward the end of the game, and John Barnard does the post-game wrap-up. Our engineer was either John Bongiovani ’70 or Tom Kendrick ’72. This was the sixth game of the season, which Princeton won, making it 3-3 at that point. The Tigers went on to a 19-7 season, which was Pete Carril’s second year at Princeton. NYU, of course, eliminated its intercollegiate basketball program many years ago. This may be the last extant recording of any NYU basketball game. (more…)

WPRB in The Daily Princetonian: The Early Years

[embeddoc url=”http://www.wprbhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Part1_TheEarlyDays.pptx” viewer=”microsoft”]

Rob Schuman ’74 sifted through The Daily Princetonian‘s extensive archive, looking at all 8,000 unique mentions of WPRB. He’s compiled the most interesting into a series of slideshows. This post documents WPRB’s early years. Beware those kilocycle gremlins.

Announcing WPRB’s Public Exhibit!

We’re thrilled to announce the long-planned second phase of WPRB’s 75th anniversary celebrations (the first being the launch of this website): a physical exhibit of station history and esoterica, which will be on display at Princeton University’s Mudd Library through May of 2016, and which is open to the public!

Titled “WPRB: A Haven for the Creative Impulse”, and curated by WPRB’s Mike Lupica and Princeton University Archivist Dan Linke, the exhibit is a meatspace version of the kind of materials we’ve been highlighting on this website. On display are vintage photographs, playlists, documents, selections from WPRB’s vinyl record library, vintage broadcast equipment, and much more. There is also an interactive content station that allows visitors to browse audio selections and WPRB-related news clippings from the last 75 years.

“WPRB: A Haven for the Creative Impulse” is a free exhibit which is open to the public. The exhibit is housed in the Wiess Lounge at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, 65 Olden Street, in Princeton, New Jersey. (Right around the corner from Hoagie Haven!) Viewing hours are Monday – Friday, 9 AM – 4:45 PM.

More info.

(more…)

WPRB at the DNC, Sting from the Police, and Freeform vs. Format

By Jordan Becker

I started at WPRB during the second semester of my freshman year in 1979. The ability to have the entire record library—and it was still all vinyl—at my disposal was intoxicating. Unless that was the fumes from the records.

At the time, the station’s rock programming was still very much beholden to the freeform model of the late 1960s-early 1970s. In fact, to my memory, the only requirement that we had was the obligation to play a certain amount of jazz during a rock show. That all changed, though, when Ashley Ellott became station manager, and Jason Meyer became program director. They attempted to turn the rock programming into something more consistent and more rock oriented. To me, there is something to be said for listeners having a general sense of what they might hear when they turn on the radio, and having some consistency from day to day and time slot to time slot theoretically results in listeners staying with the station for longer periods. On the other hand, they also insisted that we use the slogan “Your Music,” which was generally reviled—it might have worked at a professional commercial station, but was a bad idea for a college radio station.

(more…)

1989 NCAA Tournament interviews with Pete Carril and Bob Scrabis

March 17, 1989 is the date of one of the most famous first round NCAA Tournament games of all time – 16 seed Princeton’s one point loss to top-ranked powerhouse Georgetown.

While the contest has only grown in legend since it was played, re-airing hundreds of times on ESPN Classic and being called “The Game That Saved March Madness” by Sports Illustrated, the following recordings have been heard by only an exclusive few since original broadcast.

From WPRB’s transmission of this famous game, here are pre-game interviews with senior captain Bob Scrabis and head coach Pete Carril.

Both were taped between Selection Sunday and the Tigers’ trip to Providence.

(more…)

“Your Show Sucks!”

[By Ian Auzenne]

The first time I actually listened to WPRB was the night after my first appearance on (sports talk show) “Time Out”. I was listening via the webstream just to see what was on the air, and I was amazed and astounded by what I heard: Backwards records. Slowed down records. Records being played over each other—some with superb mixing; others not so much. It was a beautiful cacophony, and it was unlike anything I had ever heard.

I walked down to the station and knocked on the door. I wanted to find out who was responsible for awakening my ears.

The DJ who answered the door was a tall, hulking young man who sounded slightly older than he was. I introduced myself and, in fan boy fashion, told him how much I enjoyed what I was hearing. That jock, Adam Flynn ’08, invited me in and let me watch him at work. I was mesmerized. (more…)