WYBC

In June of 1968, when students were leaving the Yale campus for summer vacation, about a dozen of us decided to stick around New Haven and keep WYBC-FM on the air 24×7 until our classmates returned in September.

This was the first time in WYBC’s history that the station would be on the air non-stop instead of signing off when the school year ended, as many college radio stations did.

If you weren’t part of WYBC or the radio biz, this might not seem like a big deal. But it was. Many forces were at work that affected us personally, culturally, politically, and artistically. These forces led us to do what we did at WYBC in the Summer of ’68 in a way that totally changed our lives and changed radio as we knew it.

Almost immediately upon arrival at Yale, in fall of my freshman year, it became a nightly ritual for the four rooms on my floor of Welch Hall to come together and play the nightly contest on WYBC’s “Stardust.”

The hope of winning a Naples pizza was part of it, as was the amazement over what radio could do if not bound by the FCC. The contests were often obscene, or at least the winning answers usually were, and WYBC-AM, “closed circuit to the Yale campus,” played some politically incorrect singles. That unrestrained radio and a little alcohol made for a dorm party almost every night.

It was in some ways a foregone conclusion that I would heel WYBC. My brother Walt (TD ’66) was the Program Director of the station when I was a freshman.

I was naturally blessed with the gift of gab, a resonant voice, and a love of radio. That deal was sealed the night in January 1966: The WYBC Freshman News Reading Contest!

I learned the next day that I had WON the free pizza. My brother took no end of grief about his younger brother acing the competition.

Just about everything good that’s happened in my adult life is a direct result of my experience at WYBC.

When I got to Yale, I had no clue as to what I wanted to do post-Yale. My plans or lack of them didn’t include going into radio. In fact, I had no idea that college radio even existed.

[… Then] I heard what sounded like a couple of people my age broadcasting play-by-play of a Yale football game. I was astounded. College kids on radio?

Like most of us of that time I think, commercial radio (rock and roll) was an important part of my life.  I came from NYC (albeit its weird outlying borough, Staten Island) where we had WABC and WMCA and some other big-time AM “top 40″ radio stations to listen to.  Transistor radios were ubiquitous.  My mother had taught me to love classical music. Folk music was the tune my generation was marching to, and rock and roll was what made the blood pulse in your veins.

I was, among other things, a techie at WYBC. I also remained in New Haven during 1968 and did a little technical work at the station when it was required. In order to have money for school I needed a “real job”. So, I worked at WNHC-TV that summer as a broadcast engineer at the TV transmitter.

In 1968, being a techie at WYBC had its amusing moments. One morning at about 2 AM …

While so much of what was exciting and revolutionary about WYBC had to do with its focus on progressive rock and roll, there was also, for most of our time at Yale, a classical music side to WYBC FM.  That is how I got interested and involved in heeling the station.

I remember having an afternoon classical show, “Front Row Center,” …