1936, 2006: Brown Radio Then and Now
By Jenny Weissbourd
When Brown alumni received their bi-monthly copy of BAM (the Brown Alumni Magazine) in the winter of 2006, they were greeted with an uncharacteristically provocative teaser on the cover: "Radio Wars: Has WBRU Sold Out?" The corresponding article, Beth Schwartzkapfel '01's controversial piece on "Radio Heads," compares Brown's two radio stations, WBRU and BSR, specifically considering how well each fulfills the initial vision that drove George Abraham and Dave Borst to string wires across the Brown campus in 1936.[1] In the months following Schwartzkapfel's article, BAM published seven letters of response from alumni — angry tirades, praise, and personal anecdotes[2] — and a group of Brown students involved with WBRU and BSR designed a course to study and record the history of radio at Brown. According to Jason Sigal, BSR General Manager, the contentious article "provided an impetus for the collaborative independent study."[3]
Why did the BAM article incite such controversy? Schwartzkapfel provoked current and former BSR and WBRU staff to consider what Brown radio is today, has been historically, and should be, a precarious set of questions. In her attempt to answer these questions, Schwartzkapfel missed the essential distinction between campus-centered college radio of the 1930s and 1940s and today's community-oriented college radio, and the extent to which BSR and WBRU both continue Abraham and Borst's innovative project in complementary ways.
What did Abraham and Borst have in mind when they set up the Brown Network? When these two men strung wires across the Brown campus in 1936, "college radio" meant something quite different than it means today. Early Brown programming catered to university students, relaying campus news, selecting music targeted to a student audience, and, perhaps most importantly, broadcasting Brown sports games. According to R. Sherwin Dreary '41, WBRU strove for on-campus communication; their primary goal was to "wire up all the dormitories so they could hear what was going on."[4] In the 1930s and '40s, few off-campus listeners could have listened to the Brown Network. Robert Watkins '47 remembers that the two-watt Brown Network "worked in the dorms primarily," and "maybe on the side-street there somebody could pick it up if they tried."[5] Since programmers broadcast to an audience of Brown students, coverage of campus sports became some of the most important WBRU programming. Dreary remembers hitchhiking to Princeton with a roommate to broadcast the Princeton game, recounts, "We were playing Princeton football and we got enough money to get a telephone line between a telephone booth in New Jersey...and send it back to the campus and kept them appraised of how the score was going."[6]
However small, the Brown Network's on-campus audience was devoted to their station. According to Gordon Graham '43, "I think it was pretty well listened to around the campus. I never figured out any numbers of who listened or who didn't...but certainly if you went down the hallway of a dormitory you were going to hear it."[7] Neither BSR nor WBRU can boast that degree of on-campus support today.
Do WBRU and BSR fulfill Abraham and Borst's vision of the Brown Network? Does one station do so more effectively than the other? Neither WBRU nor BSR is a college station in the sense that the Brown Network was a college station; today, Brown produces two quite different varieties of community radio. Neither station gears its programming to Brown students; in fact, both stations warn Disc Jockeys against overemphasizing the stations' relationships to the university. As Sigal explains, "'Brown centrism' is just as dangerous on BRU as it is on BSR."[8] The reciprocal relationship between programming and listenership (each dictates the other) means that as their signals have grown, the Brown stations have moved away from university-focused programming, and toward two varieties of community-oriented radio.
WBRU and BSR cater to two quite different local communities. WBRU, a 20-000 watt station with 200,000 regular listeners, boasts a large New England audience. Though WBRU competes with corporate-owned commercial stations, every step in programming and production happens locally. WBRU General Manager Rita Cidre critiques Schwartzkapfel's insinuation that commercial radio cannot be community radio. According to Cidre, "Ms. Schwartzkapfel failed to mention that WBRU has an award winning news department that almost solely reports on community news."[9] Cidre also points to WBRU's Sunday 360 program, catered to the minority community in Southern New England as a vehicle to engage a meaningful political and social dialogue.[10] Cidre notes that WBRU donates a portion of its concert profits to local charities.[11]
BSR's on-air listenership is much smaller than WBRU's (both stations also stream to an international audience online). Programming at BSR is certainly more like the Brown Network of the 1930s and '40s than WBRU programming is, airing Brown sports on certain programs that reveal the station's connection to the university. But even shows like Not Your Classroom, an interview show featuring local professors (many of whom teach at Brown), caters to Providence locals as well as Brown students. As Schwartzkapfel recounts, "When the staff originally planned Not Your Classroom, they thought it would be a way to share Brown's resources with the wider Providence community."[12]
Though BSR and WBRU and very different from each other and from the Brown Network, the two coexisting stations share one essential element with Abraham and Borst's 1936 station. As Sigal explains it, "If there's an aspect of radio that somebody would like to see at Brown that doesn't already exist, they can make it happen. That was how radio at Brown began, it's how BSR started, and it's part of our mission today."[13] Abraham and Borst, college radio pioneers, operated on the premise "if it is not there, create it." By offering students the opportunity to try two divergent types of radio experience, Brown radio continues in this tradition of innovation.
Notes
1. Beth Schwartzkapfel, “Radio Heads,” Brown Alumni Magazine, January/February 2006.
2. “The Mailroom,” Brown Alumni Magazine, March/April and May/June 2006.
3. Jason Sigal to Jenny Weissbourd, e-mail, Nov. 24, 2006 (in Jenny Weissbourd’s possession).
4. R. Sherwin Dreary interview by Paul McCarthy, Brown Radio History Project.
5. Robert Watkins interview by Paul McCarthy, Brown Radio History Project.
6. Joseph Parnicky interview by Paul McCarthy, Brown Radio History Project.
7. Gordon Graham interview by Paul McCarthy, Brown Radio History Project.
8. Sigal to Weissbourd, e-mail, Nov. 24, 2006 (in Weissbourd’s possession).
9. Rita Cidre to Jenny Weissbourd, e-mail, Nov. 25, 2006 (in Weissbourd’s possession).
10. Cidre to Weissbourd, e-mail, Nov. 25, 2006 (in Weissbourd’s possession).
11. Ibid.
12. Schwartzkapfel.
13. Sigal to Weissbourd, e-mail, Nov. 24, 2006 (in Weissbourd’s possession).