RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

Section one : WHAT IS WHCR? AND HOW DO I FIT IN? WHCR is the radio station of The City College of New Уогк . We broadcast at the frequency of 90.3 on the FH dia! as a low-power, 10-watt station. This means that you may have difficulty receiving our signal, even if you live very close to the City College campus . (We wish we could do more to make our signal better , but we can't do much more , because the Federal Communications Commission requires us to broadcast pretty much the way we do now. However, we may be able to help you get better reception . Call the station and ask to speak to the Engineer . ) , We went on-the-air earlier this уеаг . You may not have heard us for the first month or so because we played music and đid "sounđ checks" to test our equipment. This Fall, we began our real broadcasts experimentally . That means we were trying out our concepts and our programming without setting things up the way they wou!d be in the f uture. We felt we needeđ a few months to become confident that we knew what we were doing . So if you heard us for the first time then , please try listening again now . You will find we have mađe many changes which we hope you'll like . (Be sure to tell us if you đo , pnd' tell us if there's something you don't like , too . ) Once we had the technical anđ conceptual experiments underway , we began to think about what it meant to be a "community radio station” . Though we had talked about that on and off for almost ten years at the College , and sometimes in Harlem with our potential auđience , we knew we could not answer that question уегу well until we had actually gone on the air and tried out some things . Then we needed to talk to everybody we coulđ about the things we had tried out, to see how well they worked , and change them as we saw what didn't work . tfhen you reađ this WHCR Conceptual Manual in the first months of 1987, you see the results of our discussions. We constantly 'evise this manual , because we are always trying to improve on (the concepts that we use to meet our goals . Of course , when you listen to the station you should get a good iđea what those goals are. But if you have time to read at least part of the Conceptual Manual, you will have a better idea of what it is we are doing at WHCR . And , if you decide you might like to work with the station, you will need to read Volume l (the part you have now ) of the Manual . We say "you will need to read it" because апу volunteers who work with the statlon must go through a process of interviews and discussions before they join our staff . Don't think we are

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