About WHRW

Ten Watts, In Mono

In 1966, WRAF applied for and was granted an FM broadcast license. This time, they requested call letters that would forever preserve their heritage. The Harpur Radio Workshop became WHRW, and broadcast a mere 10 watts in mono at 90.5 MHz on the FM dial.

It was a lonely FM dial, too. Only two other FM radio stations were on the air in the Binghamton area, and for WHRW to be a full one-third of a listener's FM choices was a big deal. In the years that followed, WHRW was mainstream rock radio by mid-60's standards: they were doing what FM rock radio did in those days - progressive, alternative programming; rock mixed with folk, jazz, classical, world, psychedelia, and spoken word; radically liberal political commentary, and, I'm sure, our fair share of mind-altering substances. FM radio had its share of formatted stations in all genres back then, playing only management-approved records, but every market had at least one "free-format" outlet. WHRW was ours.

Throughout the seventies, free-form FM radio was relegated to overnight shifts, the timeslots outside the boundaries of ratings questionnaires, but by the 1980s, free-format radio was all but a memory of a 60s experiment that kept listeners more loyal than anything since, but didn't look promising enough on station balance sheets. A few stations stayed alive by private funds, student activity fees, or underwriting (a form of advertisement by which companies "support" the programming financially, but cannot provide their own ad copy or lobby to change the station's content), but the tide had turned. A few stations, like WHRW, became passionate about staying strong in an ever-more-corrupt industry, perhaps unaware they'd one day be a living museum to an all-but-forgotten day.

WHRW is unique to college stations in that some of its most respected and revered (or infamous, in my case) broadcasters are not Binghamton University students, but volunteer members of the surrounding area, who have a passion for broadcasting unequalled by most of the students WHRW sees in a year. These people literally keep the station running during breaks and summer recess, and own a large part of WHRW's fiercely loyal audience. Oftentimes, they put in hundreds, if not thousands, of hours a year for the love of free broadcasting, their only repayment being the ability to keep that broadcasting alive in the Binghamton area, and the respect and appreciation of the station member body.

However, the station is run and managed primarily by students, with a stipulation in our constitution that our General Manager, elected annually by popular vote of the station body, must always be an underclassman. Since we are a Student Association organization, and have a direct relationship to them, WHRW operates nearly 100% of the time with no direct intervention by the school's administration. Our internal issues are dealt with professionally by a caring Board of Directors, whose only mission is the furthering of free-format radio on our airwaves. Any day-to-day problems are quickly extinguished, but most don't even get started because of our single-minded focus to keep WHRW in its unique position as a self-managed haven of free thought and creative broadcasting.

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