As part of our 1996 reunion, Jen Potter put together this collection of stories and memories of the past 49 years of the station. Special thanks to Jen and all contributors to the piece! We hope to get many more stories for next years event as well!

The History of WRCT

Our recorded history begins back in 1949, when WRCT began as an outgrowth of the studies or interest of a group of engineering [students] and a professor in radio broadcasting.1

Robert Best:

I was told a legendary story about a Carnegie campus radio station that preceded WRCT years earlier and had been broadcasting illegally through the air. A commercial station operating on the same frequency complained to the FCC who forced the station to shut down. In 1950 WRCT began operation using carrier current that limited reception to the dorm buildings.

In 1954 WRCT was located in the cellar of the old mansion on a hill on the North side of Forbes, since torn down. Announcements were made in a "sound proof" booth, about 6 feet by 4 feet, made of sound absorbing board, with double two by fours walls. A double glass window, about 2 by 3 feet, looked out onto the operating engineer, who sat at a regulation sized desk. On the sides were two large turntables, in the middle was a black box with "anti click" switches, a "dB" volume meter and volume knobs. It was not until after I left that the engineer got a headset so he could listen to the mix of the audio; before then you turned the volume up to get zero dB on peaks and hoped you were right.

We were given a World War II surplus teletype machine, a big box with a motor inside, which was synchronized with the transmitter's motor. We were given a side telephone line to the Pittsburgh Press, and received (but could not send; see, they were smart in those days) UPI (United Press International) news bulletins. When an important story came across the wires, a bell in the teletype would ring. You would run over to the machine, tear the story off the roll of large yellow paper and hand the "hot" news item to the news reader. Clyde Rohland, Station Manager in 1954-55 used to count the number of bells. When Stalin died we got 8 bells. When the President of UPI died, we got 12 bells. Clyde got disillusioned about what the news director thought was important, and stopped counting bells.

I was elected WRCT Business Manager in 1954-55. (because I was passing all my courses?) I was called into the Dean of Men's Office to explain why, for the second year in a row, WRCT had bounced checks. He and I went over my checkbook stubs, then the Bank's records. We found that, for the second year in a row, the Student Council voted $300.00 to WRCT. WRCT added it into our books. The student Council never wrote the WRCT check. The Dean talked the Student Council Treasurer into writing the 1955 check for $300, but he was not eager to do this, as the council lost money during "his" year, while last year's treasurer showed a "profit." (I was there.)

I was the WRCT Chief Operating Engineer second semester 1954, as I recall because the previous Engineer found he could not both pass his courses and stay long hours at the station. I grew up with three sisters, and could study in an insane asylum, let alone a radio studio. One of my jobs us to train new Engineers. Another was telling Jim Boyden, then in Grad School, when a transmitter tube burned out. We are spoiled by transistors; a tube, running 24 hours a day, seemed to have a life of 3 months. I hope that I was as good a teacher as Jim, Karl and Clyde were to me. Many times when training, the News Reader would not show up, so I would read the news, while the Engineer in training had to work the knobs and turntables as best he could. At times there was a 30 second pause as I opened the door, ran out and threw a switch. Recall that this was the time of "live" television, where sets would fall down in the middle of a play, actors forgot lines or broke up during comedy routines, etc. Jackie Gleason is still funny. We were not as sophisticated as we are today, but we had a lot more fun.

Jim Boyden [...] built the WRCT (as I recall 1/2 watt, crystal controlled) vacuum tube carrier current transmitter, located in the cellar of his dorm. It coupled into the campus A.C. wiring and did not require an FCC license. Jim was one of those rare people who thought so fast that it seemed that when you were talking to him, he knew what you were going to say before you said it, and he answered you before you were finished. He could explain anything to anyone.

Clyde Rohland, Station Manager 1954-55 had a world of talent. He spent many hours at WRCT. He was a good organizer and everyone liked him. Unfortunately, vector calculus was not one of Clyde's talents.

One of the things that took place while I was active at the station was the time we had a segment on NBC's "Monitor" weekend radio program covering Carnegie Tech's Spring Carnival. We focused on the buggy races. We ran around with the "new" (at that time) Ampex tape deck on a two wheeled hand truck donated by my father to all the fraternities. We interviewed each of the Buggy Race Chairmen and edited the feature to include only the winning group. It was a lot of work for a five minute segment nationwide.

Another thing we did was a little illegal: we would go to a campus function, find a pay phone, and hook up our homemade "black box" and do a "live remote." We had to time the segments so that the operator wouldn't break in at an inopportune time and ask for another nickel.

I was active at the station for the entire four years at Tech. Worked my way through being a staff announcer, had a couple of music programs, was Chief Announcer, Station Manager, and in my senior year another program. It was a lot of fun! I was always impressed by the technical skills of the engineers who kept us on the air with scrounged up parts from the discards of the downtown radio stations.

When I became audio engineer in spring 1956, the WRCT studios were located in the basement of an old house located on the north side of Forbes Ave east of the frat houses. The old house housed several student organizations until the Skibo building was built in 1960. I understand that this Skibo building has also been torn down and was replaced by a University Center building. In 1958 when the old Skibo building was yet to be built and was being designed, I designed the WRCT studios for the building. I believe the studios remained in the basement of the Skibo building during the 30 some years that the building existed.

When I was there (1955-1959) there were two ten watt WRCT transmitters, one in the basement of Boss Hall and the other in the basement of Morewood Gardens. The 600 khz AM radio signal was supposed to be limited to the dorm buildings, but the signal could be picked up on Forbes Ave. about two miles away. In 1959 the WRCT audio equipment still used the old vacuum tube technology which was being obsoleted by the new transistor technology during the late 50's. There were no circuit boards or microchips in those days.

One of the most active announcers on WRCT in 1957 was Marshall Pihl a drama student who went around Pittsburgh interviewing people on WRCT and reporting on games.

I was tapped for the Chief Radio Engineer job by Phil Stein, two doors down from me at Donner Hall, who had the only truly Hi Fi system on campus. I don't remember who I replaced, but I inherited a transmitter situation that had nothing going for it but potential for improvement.

At that time there were two Chief Engineers: the Chief Audio Engineer (the job I really wanted) was Bob Best. I believe that he lived at the station; he was always there.

The idea [of carrier current] was to modulate the AC wiring so that the station would be picked up by a nearby radio, but 60 Hz hum would not. The station had been shut down a few years previously because the more RF watts that were coupled into the wiring, the better the reception. One legend has it that we were once received in Utah, by a freak weather condition, but our downfall was the complaint to the FCC from a station in Apollo, Pa, who was losing listeners to us. Needless to say, when we got our license back we were more careful. We did get to Oakland via the street car lines, but that was OK, since the FCC permitted up to a certain field strength from any wire carrying the signal, no matter how many wires were involved.

We had two studios and a control room, plus a shop where Bob lived. The console was homemade, but we were proud of our two RekOCut turntables with Pickering cartridges, and our new Altec microphone. Rented phone lines carried the audio to the transmitters.

Everything was homemade. The Morewood Gardens transmitter was not even mounted in a cabinet; it was simply laid out on a table top, breadboard style, including vacuum tubes. One of my first projects was to consolidate that. I bought a surplus B29 transmitter that was almost the right frequency, modified it, and modulated it with a (then) state of the art audio amplifier, a 50 watt Dynakit. It worked very well.

Realizing the fidelity limitations of carrier current and the inevitable 60 Hz modulation, I tried out an idea, using the new Morewood Gardens transmitter. Conceivably, a loop antenna could be wrapped around a dorm; reception inside the loop would be great, but at a great distance away from the loop the total (net) apparent RF current would diminish to zero. I set up a loop, modulated the transmitter with a tape loop, adjusted the signal strength for good S/N ratio inside the loop and got into my 1940 Chevy too see how fast the station died out. I could still hear the tape loop in Greensburg, and learned a lesson about theory vs practice. Experiment abandoned.

On the Audio side, I did a program each week with Tim Day, playing his (and some of my) jazz records. He was the announcer and I was the engineer. We had a teletype (courtesy of Chesterfield Cigarettes) and we did "rip and read" newscasts. (A test of a good newscaster was in how cool and professional he could sound after his news copy had been set afire.) One evening the announcer after Tim decided to do the Morse code introduction to the news verbally, so we set her up in the 2nd studio, and she began: "Beep..beep..bebeep..beep..(snicker)" (air silence we were now rolling on the floor) . The next sound was the phone, because the station manager Phil Stein monitored EVERY program. "very unprofessional" according to him.

We had a Saturday night program run by Marshal Pihl, a drama major, that was reminiscent of Saturday Night Live. It was called Radio Merrimac (because NBC at that time had a program called Radio Monitor). Marshall was also a piano player and singer, having studied with Tom Leherer, personally. Tom Leherer was considered "off limits" by Phil S. and, sure enough, Marshall was suspended for playing one of his songs. One of his "bits" was a takeoff on the Saturday morning NBC Radio Monitor weather girl, who would give the weather in several cities very sexily close to the mike, with syrupy strings in the background. Our Radio Merrimac had "Prunella", who was in reality the recorded weather voice from the telephone. Word got back to the phone company about that, and this was the era where Bell considered any connection to the phone system highly illegal. They sent a serviceman to the station to trace the connection into the console and cut it. He couldn't find it; Bob Best had routed it so that only he knew how it got to the console. I was on duty when the phone man was snooping around: "I know that the phone signal is in your console, but I will be dammed if I can find it."

We had an "emergency record, in case the next announcer didn't show up on time. It was Leonard Pennario playing Chopin. We would count the seconds between the start of that record and the phone ringing Phil Stein, again. Actually, Phil was a good influence on the station personnel at that time, because he forced some professionalism that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Cueing on the air by mistake would get a phone call, too.

One project that was pretty successful was aimed at keeping our audience throughout the daylight hours, when the station wasn't normally on the air. We made an arrangement with WLOA FM in Braddock, which was the only Classical station in the area, to rebroadcast their signal over WRCT. We built an FM tuner kit from Olson Electronics to pick up the signal. It worked out well.

We needed (or so we thought) a way to do live remotes without renting a phone line. I built a remote amplifier in a suitcase that would clip onto the transmitter connections in any phone, anywhere, and come back to the studio via the "Prunella" connection. Marshall and I interviewed a popular morning radio personality (Rege Cordic) from KDKA from his home in Swickley, using this device. Another first for WRCT.

[...] In the fifties, we had CLASS programming classical and jam with some other features, like recorded concerts, live sports events, and a weekly jazz trio. The trio was headed by Paul Hayden Duensing, with yours truly on clarinet, and we recorded on the station's Berlant Concertone full track reel-to-reel recorder on Saturday mornings in the fine arts building. This went fine until we were discovered playing that "awful jazz" by Mrs. Benn who ran the music department. The Berlant Concertone was used for other things that may have some value now, if the tapes are still around. For example, Woody Herman played a concert that we recorded, as well as all of the Scotch åN Soda original musicals, even putting out some LP's, which I have a few of.

Patricia Schuetz:

I was in the record library one afternoon cataloging stock while he [Barry Cornet] was auditioning a woman student for on-air broadcasting. In 1964 the concept of a woman's voice on the air was a complete novelty Cokie Roberts hadn't even been hired by NPR then, and there were no women newscasters on TV. I was fascinated. I was also puzzled and in later and more enlightened years, appalled at the realization that, while this young woman began her audition in a clear, conversational tone of voice, Barry was forcing her into a lower and lower register, until she had achieved the sultry, seductive, breathy voice of an educated hooker. Excellent! he announced, and gave her the job. I would have to count that as one of the most significant learning experiences of my four years at Tech.

I presume you don't still use the Scaife Hall keypunches for your record catalog, but I imagine you still have egg cartons on the studio walls.

We all have our own mental time slice of WRCT. Mine encompasses Fall 1967 to Spring 1971. By my arithmetic, it's the exact center of the radio station's history. As Co-Program Manager for a semester and General Manager for almost 3 years I was very much in the thick of events. I took these events very seriously so my emotions at the station ran the gamut from exhilaration to despair. I prefer to remember the exhilaration. I still get excited thinking about my experiences.

This was a period of great change for the radio station. At its start it broke forever with its previous programming style a bit of everything and switched to rock n' roll. Through these four years the station's style was consistent and disciplined, in a word: professional. By the period's end sentiment was building toward a freer, more eclectic program style and toward making another push to make WRCT FM a reality.

This was an exciting period at WRCT for a lot of reasons. A summary:

1. An expedition into disciplined, commercial sounding radio in what evolved into a then revolutionary program format
2. New studios
3. New transmitters
4. An aggressive news department and public affairs programming department
5. 24hour broadcasting.
6. A lot of promotion ("WRCT is almost every where!")
7. A great, inventive era for contemporary music both pop and the new "progressive rock"
8. The soundproofing egg cartons on the wall gave way to acoustic tile
9. The cork floor got carpeting

In 1967 WRCT was almost 25 years old and had been in Skibo about 5. The previous year, 196667, had seen a large upheaval. Fall 1967 arrived to find a WRCT consisting mostly of a few seniors and a lot of eager freshmen, including me. The station was making a big change from variety, block programming to formatted rock n' roll (Top 40).

To me that was terrific. I'd already set my sights on going into radio and came to Carnegie Mellon largely because it had a radio station. As luck had it, there were a number of other freshmen who had the same kinds of interests and aspirations. Achieving the largest campus audience became an instant goal for many of us.

In Fall 1967 we labeled the station Power Nine Radio and played hit music. This was still when Top 40 meant playing all kinds of music from rock to rhythm and blues to country Beatles to Otis Redding to Glen Campbell. We weeded out the more juvenile fare 1910 Fruitgum Company, for example and found ourselves adding intriguing "Underground" music. We weren't quite sure what to make of the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Cream but it was fascinating music.

It was indeed an exciting period in popular music. The late 60s generated a lot of innovative, durable music with the likes of Motown, the Beatles and Rolling Stones and the rest of the British invasion plus the wide appeal of soul/R&B. 60s oldies and 70s classic rock are still staples on the radio with much of their audiences far too young to remember the music in its original go-around. While we certainly didn't make the music, we certainly were caught up in the excitement of the era.

WRCT had jingles, too. We culled the jingle demo tapes of the radio station jingle producers and made them our own. The razor blade and splicing tape got a lot of use. Call letters and frequencies got clipped out. "More Music. WRKO!" and "Now Radio. WRKO!" were spliced together and became "More Music. Now Radio!"

Over the next few years, Power Nine gave way to the ubiquitous WRCT/9 logo. We made a concerted effort to plaster it everywhere. I believe the logo stuck around unchanged until the advent of WRCT FM a total of about five years. We used the promotional phrase "Now Radio." To us that had a double meaning. The "Now" meant "contemporary" but it was also a statement about an often comtemptuous opinion held by many around campus about the station. To them we were saying, "Yes, we're real radio now."

Over the next few years, the sound became less rigid and incorporated more and more of what was now being called Progressive Rock. Late evenings, in particular, were given over to the new music. Promotion was big part of the WRCT of the late 60s/early 70s. Part of the effort to make WRCT appear omnipresent was making colorful silkscreened posters promoting the station and its activities. We did about a dozen runs a year. They made great dorm wallpaper and were stolen about as quickly as they went up.

We didn't believe that WRCT could be a strong, credible force in the campus community without a strong news department and we did that too. We viewed the Tartan as competition and worked hard to get the stories first. WRCT presented nightly newscasts, a News of the Week program on Sundays plus specials as events warranted.

During this period, the studios were almost completely rebuilt. MCR, the Master Control Room, was rebuilt in 67-68 where the former studio A was. It became the allpurpose studio until Studio B was rebuilt and became the on-air studio a couple of years later. The large Studio A (the former MCR) was used for news. It also housed the successive iterations of WRCT' s tape automation system that provided the programming when we couldn't provide real human disk jockeys. 24 hour broadcasting was a reality. As a continuation of a long tradition, the studio consoles were hand-built, not purchased.

Studio B was finished in 1970 and had a hidden cornerstone (an autographed piece of plywood) left as a treat for whoever ultimately replaced it. We anticipated the end would come in 5 years, possibly a little longer. The cabinetwork was too sturdy, it seems. I wound up retrieving the cornerstone myself just before Skibo met the wrecking ball almost 25 years later.

Our set of home-built AM transmitters continued to be a maintenance nightmare. Finally in about 1970 we got the money for a set of commercially built low-power AM transmitters. They weren't perfect but they were a vast improvement.

We took a lot of pride in the station's looks, too. It was actually kept neat. We vacuumed the carpet and kept the vivid, saturated colors paint scheme touched up. It seemed important.

Our efforts to make WRCT a smooth, appealing radio station didn't go unnoticed. The general feedback from the campus community about what we were doing was very good but we had no quantitative measure. In Spring 1970 a listener survey cited WRCT as the most-listened-to radio station on campus. We beat KQV and KQVF FM by wide margins. This was both amazing and a thrill.

Success with listeners didn't mean tranquility. Sentiment was building for reducing or eliminating the format and style restrictions. The Class of 1971 that had been so forceful in creating the sound was thinking about graduation, had moved on to professional activities in the real broadcasting world or just gotten tired of the fights over philosophy and direction.

Eventually, the pressure and the noise became too much for me and I left the General Manager's job a little shy of my third full year. I now see that what happened late in my tenure and in the following years was probably inevitable. I didn't view it with that tranquility at the time, though.

I haven't mentioned people by name in my part of this history. There were many great contributors and it was very much a team effort. You know who you are. My personal thanks go to everyone who helped make the WRCT of my era a great sounding radio station and a fun, exciting place to be.

I remember a lot that had to do with the events of the times since I was a news reporter at the station. It was at the height of the Vietnam War. Much of the news had to do with that. We got news feeds from ABC and added local news of campus stuff and anything we thought was of general interest. I got a chance to interview Strom Thurmond when he came to speak and got pelleted by marshmallows in a protest against the war. After his speech in the Skibo ballroom, I went up to ask him questions and the barrage of marshmallows began. He seemed very kind as he put an arm around me and said he would answer my questions. Actually, he used me as a shield as we walked out of the ballroom and once outside strolled away, saying, "I have no comment."!

I also interviewed Paul of Peter, Paul and Mary. We also reported on the birthday lottery the drawing of who was to be called to go to Vietnam first by a drawing of birthdates. We took the ABC feed on that and the whole news team was hard at work we lost a few members of the news team as things went on that evening and their birthdates were called out (some in the top 10-100). Scary.

Mark Bodnar:

I did the CMU thing from 1980 through Dec 85 (BS in CheE and Tech Writing). I was RCT my first day on campus, Assistant GM by October, and GM from March 81 through May 83. In that time I worked the legal thing for our first power increase with Pitt and Channel 6 Johnstown challenging our application. Not long after I stepped down, WRCT was granted a tenfold power increase to 100 Watts.Took a year off (that's the åRCT way!) and came back from Sept 84 through June of 86, acting as Training Director. On the air I was Chuck Farley.

From 1981-85, I was extremely active at the radio station, as Music Director, DJ, and many other activities. We accomplished a great deal during those important years when, among other things, we moved from 10-100 watts...finally!

As far as highlights: The year I was GM, we went to 100 watts, we built a new MCR (production studio), upgraded the air studio, renovated the record library. It was a great year with a record staff size that was well over 100 people.

I also briefly met Pres. Mitterand of France when he came to speak at school. (WRCT simulcast the speeches French in one channel, English in the other.)

I was Chief Engineer for the 83-84 academic year, then General Manager for the 84-85 and 85-86 years.

I stayed around Pgh working and living year-round during my time at CMU, and the station was a pretty significant part of my life. Lots of stories... among other things, I was part of taking the station from 10W to 100W, pulled some cool hacks to transmit the Francois Mitterand address on campus bilingually during our 100W on-air "transmitter testing", and presided over the station during the summer we operated from the ground level of Morewood while Skibo had sewer work done that required emptying the building. A group of us also renovated the station internally, including moving walls, doing power and audio wiring ourselves, and rejuvenating both the air and production studios. Oh, and we stripped and rebuilt the record library too.

Buying "cart cleaning alcohol" on a CMU purchase order from Craig Street Distributing that was delivered in cases of widemouth bottles... The red couch that wouldn't go away no matter which dumpster we put it in... broadcasting hardcore shows live from the Electric Banana... trying to do away football games the year AT&T got divested and the long lines part of the telephone industry went into chaos...

First off, let me clarify my story. I was Neil Greenblum ... when I attended CMU. I used Neil Jordan as my on-air name, and adopted the name legally after I graduated.

Oddly enough, I made my mark at the station as a sports guy. I think the only reason I was elected GM (87-88) was that the station was in a lot of trouble with the administration at the time, and I had a pretty good relationship with Warner Hall and Student Senate, so the staff felt that I could do damage control and good PR. I guess I did okay, because WRCT appears to be thriving every time I pass through Pittsburgh.

The initiative was taken in 1988 to make the final leap forward, to become as powerful as we ever could. So we filed an application with the FCC in Washington to increase as much as we were allowed by law. If everything had gone smoothly, we might have been able to increase as early as 1989, but some things just aren't meant to be so easy.1

During carnival of the 90 or 91, whatever the year before the skibo parking garage went up was, we again parked the truck and broadcasted over midway. as was par for the time, it was a 24 foot ford with a traditional front end, pretty much the biggest you could get. This year was more exciting then most truck wise because for the first time we went with Budget. Barry Slaymaker, the Chief Engineer at the time, worked a great deal and got a brand spanking new truck because of the advertising aspect to budget.

Well, I forget which night it was, but we rolled onto midway late to set up. It was already dark and pretty cold. Barry kept the truck running to keep it warm and use the lift to set up. after about 1020 minutes, a passerby asked us (sitting in the truck) about the pavement glowing red under the truck. Red? We all hopped out to see a red reflection in the pavement under the truck. With a quick glance underneath you could see a 1 foot flame coming out of the tail pipe. Apparently, Barry had left the choke pulled and the engine was running way to rich. The entire exhaust system from the block to the tip of the flame was glowing beet red. An amazing site. It looked like one of those models from the toy store.

Of course, when we went to shut off the engine, we realized the door was locked. We tried coat hangers, etc. and eventually popped the hood and pull the spark plug wires. Ford tough.

One day the fire inspector came down to 'rct (Skibo) to check on the extinguishers. He looked around the studio at all the sonex and exclaimed, "It's all got to go!" I said, "What?" He said, "It not only deadens sound, it deadens people." He walked out and never returned. (Incidentally, the sonex in the new studio is class 1 fire rated, and the old sonex stayed until the demise of the Margaret Morrison Plaza studios.)

Sam Minter:

1990-1995, first as a News Staffer, then as News Director, then Public Affairs director (where I moved the station from 1 hour a month of PA programming to 10 hours a week of Talk Shows and News...), then a number of other things until I left Pittsburgh at the end of last year...

When tenteus did the station move from Skibo to MMP (tenteus at that time was myself, Kevin Kim, Ray Caperoon, and Dan Bidwa), we tried to retain as much wiring as possible. When it was time for the air studio to be moved, we really wanted to avoid rewiring the airboard but it was wired to the punch block. We tried for a while to "engineer" a solution, which pretty much ended when Kevin took a circular saw to the entire air studio. With respect to those who put it together, there was wood and dust flying everywhere.