[By Dave Forrest ’60]
Reminiscences of the heroic age of PRB in the late 50’s retain their noble lustre beneath the encrusted molluscs and other crud of time. Other contributors to this [project] will no doubt limn the brilliant PRB trajectories of such mythic figures as Siggins, Crowther, McGuire, Dunn, Fuellhart, McCracken, Miller, McGiffert, Fleishhaker, Medina, et al. and the promulgated joys of midcult and masscult offerings of the station.
By Kenneth McCarthy ’81
I first got involved with PRB in the spring of my freshman year (1978). It was an interesting time for the station. Though there were a lot of talented individuals in areas like engineering and programming, other area like sales, training, and scheduling were a bit shaky to say the least.
As best as I can remember, the station had only one sponsor, the University Store and one ad, the “These Are My Favorite Things” spot. Thank God it was a good spot because we played it twice an hour, every hour. And we didn’t log that many hours. It wasn’t unusual for the station to sign off after Morning Classical at 10 AM due to a lack of DJ’s.
The details of what happened the next year when the new management group took over could fill a book. It was a complex situation. As an organization, PRB had to be rebuilt from scratch. We had very few members and new people had to be attracted, brought in, and trained fast. There was also a major ideological split among the managers. You had one group that wanted the station to have a top 40 sound and another group that wanted the station to be an alternative to what was available on commercial radio.
In 1981 or 82, two of WPRB’s classical DJs traveled to New York City to interview legendary composer Leonard Bernstein using a portable Marantz cassette recorder. Here is the interview in its entirety. (Note: Sound quality is rough at the beginning, but improves quickly.)
Digitized 11/25/14 by Bill Rosenblatt.
