History
The masthead of the Bates Student proclaims it was "Established in 1873". The seal of the Outing Club gives its founding date as 1920. And the Brooks Quimby Debate Council... well, let's just say that huge trophy case in Pettigrew Hall speaks for itself. Few realize that WRBC also has a long, rich, and storied history of its own. While you won't find it talked about in the viewbook or by the Admissions tour guides - at least not yet - we present a brief account of the history of campus radio at Bates:
Radio at Bates began with the efforts of the legendary rhetoric professor and debate coach Brooks Quimby. A radio enthusiast, he ran his own amateur station, and even wrote the FCC in 1942 asking to build a 10-watt radio station on campus. (Such stations would not become available until the advent of the FM broadcast band later that decade.) Though his efforts to secure such a station were unsuccessful, he did not give up on radio altogether: "Bates On The Air", a weekly program produced by his Radio Class from studios in Chase Hall, debuted in 1945 on WCOU in Lewiston. This program was also occasionally carried on stations in Portland and Augusta, and continued into the mid 1950's.
In the spring of 1951, interest in constructing a campus radio station surfaced among the student body. A group of students - soon to become the station's first executive board - met to organize and plan for the station's construction. A professor in the Physics department volunteered to build the transmitting equipment for a carrier-current AM station. (Carrier-current AM stations are a type of closed-circuit campus radio station that inject their signal into the power lines of buildings around campus; the signal can be received within about 25 feet of an outlet or power cable.)
That fall, the equipment was ready. An organizational meeting drew 150 people - an impressive turnout for a campus of 800 students. The station, calling itself WVBC (the Voice of Bates College), signed on at 9:00 PM on Friday evening, November 2, 1951. Broadcasting from the Chase Hall studios, it initially featured a two-hour schedule of programming six nights a week. The signal could be heard at 640 AM in all campus buildings, except the infirmary.
Despite its successful beginning, regular technical problems plagued the station in the fifties. Also, by nature the signal did not reach the surrounding community; this became a special concern with the end of "Bates On The Air" in the mid-fifties, leaving students and faculty with no public outlet for their radio production activities. As a result, Bates applied to the FCC for a 10-watt station on the relatively new FM broadcast band. The staff suggested several possible call signs for the new station to the FCC, including WVBC, WBCR, WRBC, WVOB, and WRJR (after the first initials of staff members Ron Cook, Joan Williams Lepper, and Robert Kalisher); the Comission chose WRJR, probably because all the other call signs may have taken. The new station took to the public airwaves at 1:00 PM on Sunday, October 26, 1958, at 91.5 FM, from purpose-built studios in the basement of Pettigrew Hall (at and around the present location of the Information Services Help Desk).
Despite its technical superiority, FM radio had yet to come into mass acceptance; up until the mid-to-late sixties, AM stations ruled the airwaves, and most radios could only receive AM broadcasts. Since so few people owned FM-capable radios in 1958, FM-to-AM converters were initially installed at strategic locations around campus to rebroadcast the signal at 800 AM. However, these converters soon either broke down, or were shut down due to issues with off-campus interference (the exact turn of events is uncertain). As a result, WRJR found itself broadcasting to slim audiences, both on campus and off. Grandiose ideas to increase listenership were proposed, but dropped for various reasons; these included buying an FM-capable receiver for every dorm room, and mounting a 1000-watt transmitter atop Mount David.
In the late seventies, WRJR moved from its purpose-built studio in the basement of Pettigrew to its present quarters in the basement of Alumni House (31 Frye Street, known to most as the home of the Office of Career Services); while the old, soundproofed studios were annexed as rehearsal space by the Music Department, the new basement location offered multiple studios (since converted to office space), and more room for album storage (which has since been nearly exhausted). The station's transmitting antenna was also moved to its present location, an old ham radio mast left behind from Alumni House's previous owner.
Though venerable, the call letters WRJR were not immediately interpretable as being related to Bates College (unlike WVBC, the "Voice of Bates College"); at worst, the "RJR" might draw an association with the R. J. Reynolds tobacco empire. Fortunately, in the late 1970's, an all-news AM station in Jackson, Mississippi with the call letters WRBC went silent. Seizing the opportunity to acquire call letters with more school spirit, the station applied to the FCC for a new call sign, and on April 5, 1981 (the 126th anniversary of Bates' founding), formally became known as WRBC, standing for "Radio Bates College".
In 1982, WRBC increased its radiated power output from 10 to the present 120 watts. This increased the station's listening area exponentially; where the station could once only be heard on campus and in the surrounding neighborhoods, the station could now be picked up for at least a 15-mile radius around Lewiston. Up until this time, the station's signal was notoriously weak, even a few blocks from the station; though previously licensed to transmit at up to 10 watts, a measurement made in the late seventies recorded only three watts of actual output coming from the transmitting antenna.
About this time, the station commenced 24-hour operation during the school year. This was quite an accomplishment for a station at a school the size of Bates; the management of the time was astounded that the level of interest necessary to fill all 56 time slots existed on the 1500-student campus. (A strong level of interest in WRBC continues today - the Princeton Review recently ranked Bates among the top twelve schools in the nation when it comes to interest in campus radio; it is estimated that one out of every six Batesies is involved in WRBC at some point in their Bates careers.)
In the early nineties, the station began broadcasting through the summer months, utilizing a staff of volunteer DJ's from the local community. This event increased the station's listenership in the Lewiston-Auburn area significantly, got more community members involved in the station during the school year, and marked an important milestone in WRBC's continuing effort to become a truly community-oriented radio station.
Compiled by Rob Pelkey '98