CMJ Scandal!

I was reading the Wikipedia entry for CMJ and I have to share. Toward the end of CMJ's existence there was a scandal. Well not much of a scandal but that's what some writer on Wikipedia called it.  [SOURCE] So let's quote that passage, as it appears in the article:

Minor scandals followed. CMJ was accused of manipulating their charts in order to push their own compilation into the Top 200; however, CMJ claimed it was an accident and the compilation was only used as a placeholder. This resulted in CMJ changing the name of their New Music Report compilation from Certain Damage to On Air. In addition, the magazine was criticized at the time by many in the independent music community for focusing too much on major label acts, which resulted in Beggars Group pulling ads from the publication.

So this is partly accurate. It cites as a source, earshot-online [LINK] written by one Michael Barclay. Barclay is not a bad egg. He's a legit music journalist in Canada. (He has a substack now) Canadian college stations did report to the CMJ chart so Canada did have a horse in that race. I should disclose that Earshot also published it's own charts which is a conflict of interest, as far as criticizing other music charts but I can confirm what they reported is materially accurate.

First lets discuss how charts work. Hundreds of college radio music directors submitted top 30 reports to CMJ every week. They were mostly albums, though some singles were sprinkled in. This was by phone and fax back in the 80s, and gradually email submission became the dominant method by the mid-1990s. The problem is that Johnny can't count to 30. A surprising number of kids would submit charts of 29 records or fewer. They simply miscounted, or accidentally included duplicates. In the plain text environment of free Hotmail or Yahoo accounts it was easy to miss. Spell check and grammar check existed but the context-sensitive spell checkers that could detect a number sequence came later.

I personally knew the fellows who edited that chart. I won't name names, but in a well-intended effort to include more stations reports, i.e. net greater accuracy, they would insert the most recent Certain Damage compilation as a place-holder for the missing album. This was such a small number of corrections that they did not expect it to affect the top 200 report at all. The average week incorporated more than 1,500 charts per week, so it was a drop in the bucket. But then it did show up. Oops. 

The reason some indie labels called foul, was that record labels had to pay to be included on the Certain Damage compilation. From the outside it looked kind of like payola. It wasn't, but some indie purists got indignant. I'm not picking on Beggars Banquet records. The source of the claim is un-cited, and if it happened I was unaware at the time. The Editor-in-Chief of CMJ, Kevin Boyce, wrote a nice apology letter with a full mea culpa, which was published in the March 10th 2003 issue of CMJ. [SOURCE] 

“The decision to replace unverified albums with Certain Damage was a foolish one... of course, in retrospect, we should've picked a more benign placeholder. At the time it was our genuine belief that this was a temporary fix in advance of curing a larger internal technical issue.”

In the before time, when there were fewer chart reporters CMJ staff would sometimes send the top 30 back to you if it contained errors. I know this because it happened to me when I was the college kid who couldn't count to 30. But when there are 1,500 charts to collate —that is not a scalable process. The later online submission form put an end to the problem. No one, no matter how hungover, could submit partial reports anymore and no chart with unverifiable records would be accepted anymore.

This new verification process led to a second lesser scandal where real but obscure albums caused Top 30 charts to be rejected. That became the subject of the March 24th 2003 issue. [SOURCE] It was a classic over-correction error.  (Earshot and CMJ  describe a letter from CEO Bobby Haber addressing the issue, but the URL was not archived [LINK] and it appears to be lost)

But you may be wondering... how did a few dozen manual corrections skew the chart in the first place?  Oh that's a thing even fewer people know. and since CMJ is no more, I think it is safe to share the thing that almost nobody knows... It starts with station weights. 

Not all airplay is created equally. It is somewhat intuitive that airplay on a 10 watt station will generally be heard by fewer people than a 50,000 watt station. CMJ used station weights such that "big" stations charts were weighted more than "little" ones. It wasn't super scientific, but the basis was logical. Bigger markets, taller towers, more watts all added up to bigger station weights. NACC actually used a near identical set of weights. [SOURCE]  A caveat before the next paragraph... this is from memory, decades later. It might not be perfect.

Anyway, every record promoter and record label had a list and the biggest weight was a 5 and the smallest was a 1. Not a huge scale but it all sounds pretty sensible so far right? That's the basis of the old CORE chart, just the airplay from the big stations: 4s and 5s. WRAS is the first 5 that comes to mind. I think KEXP, KCRW and WFMU were as well. (I wish I'd kept some of those reports.) All carrier current stations were 1s. Most stations didn't know about the weights at all, but the industry folks did, it was on all the tracking reports because that's critically important to know if you are trying to get a record to chart.

Here are 5 things you probably disn't know about the CMJ charts: 

1. Station weights were not static. Industry folks could lobby for revisions to station weights. For example: I personally got CMJ to downgrade WYBC in New Haven, CT down from a 4 to a 1. They had been miss-assigned a weight based on the 3,000 watt 94.3 FM stick. But the actual reporting station was 1340 WYBC-AM with only 1,000 watts on a tower which was actually in West Haven. (Today they don't even have the AM stick, they're WYBCx. [LINK]  Sorry/Not sorry.)
 
2. The station weights were not the actual station weights. The weights the promoters and label folks saw were actually mapped to another set of numbers. This was top secret. This was known inside CMJ to some, but considered the secret sauce of the chart so to speak. Most people did not know even inside the industry. What I remember is that a 1 was a 0.3, a 2 was a 1, a 3 was a 3 and a 4 was a 5. I think a 5 was actually a 7 or 8. My memory is a bit hazy; its been a few decades. Anyway with that kind of multiplier, you can see how even the #30 spot on a few "big" station top 30 charts might accidentally push a Certain Damage compilation onto the top 200 chart. Before you cry foul, station weighting and even more complex "momentum" formulas are standard practice in commercial charts and even in retail music sales numbers. Its always a secret formula. Don't hate the player, hate the data model.

3. There were fake records! As a prank, some promoters would ask stations to chart records which did not actually exist. Other promoters indignantly would report these ad hoc to the beleaguered editor of CMJ and they would be manually removed. This was most prevalent for the final chat of each year in December but it could happen any week of the year. In that 2003 article, CMJ called out fake records by Beach Whistle, Soccer Mom, Golden Showers and Prostate Dancer as examples. (I am leaving out the promoters names to protect the guilty.)

4. There were lots of fake Top 30 lists. Some promoters were extra dirty and reported fake top 30 charts impersonating real stations. This was surprisingly easy to do. There was no validation process with emailed charts. Every station with a subscription could report. So all you had to do was impersonate a college station who wasn't reporting... and there were many to choose from. Some had seasonal gaps, others just never reported for whatever reason.

5. Charting was mostly fake anyway. Most Top 30 reports in reality were popularity polls driven by free T-shirts, tickets and tchotchkes. It was generally not reflective of actual airplay. This was before monitoring services like RAM and Mediaguide offered data-driven alternatives and the industry largely embraced that when it came. Later, self-reported charts like Spinitron pushed college radio charts into unexpectedly egalitarian territory. I don't even know what they do now for charts. Do kids listen to the radio anymore? 

Both Billboard and The Awl declared CMJ dead in 2016. It wasn't the first or the last time. [SOURCE] Vice Magazine declared CMJ dead in 2017. [SOURCE] The most recent reboot was an unexpected revival of the CMJ marathon in 2021. Their social media stopped updating after the event and the CMJ website is remains frozen in time. Ultimately the mergers, acquisitions and lawsuits probably did much more damage to the brand than any of the chart problems. More here, here and here.

Jack Ruby and KLIF

Anyone with any level of interest in the Kennedy assassination from the student, to the historian, to the conspiracy theorist knows who Jack Ruby is. But many of them won't know anything about 1190 KLIF-AM, and even fewer the connection between the two. The Kennedy assassination was a tragedy of course but also a huge news event so the city was swarming with local news people. So as coverage ramped up for the Kennedy assassination beat it also proliferated a witness list for the Oswald assassination which included a huge number of radio and news people. 552 different witnesses' testimony was presented to the Warren Commission. It included police, attorneys and Oswald's acquaintances.  But that list includes multiple radio staff:

• Corporon, John
• Duncan, William Glenn, Jr
• Jenkins, Ronald Lee
• Pappas, Icarus M.
• Richey, Warren E.
• Stuckey, William Kirk
• Underwood. James R.
• Walker, Ira N., Jr.

That list has zero overlap with the Ruby trial witnesses. Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24th 1963 in Dallas. Access was limited in secure buildings, but KLIF-AM was on the scene for the prisoner transfer of Oswald but did not broadcast the shooting live. NBC was the lone TV network to have broadcast live coverage. NBC News correspondent Tom Pettit, was the voice everyone recognizes shouting “Lee Oswald has been shot!”  The first mention of the shooting on KLIF is at 9:51 on this video:

First the events you already know about.  Sunday morning, November 24th, the police were ready to move Harvey Oswald to the county jail. A distance of one mile.  At 11:20 AM Oswald emerged flanked by officers. Captain J. Will Fritz led two detectives escorting Oswald through a basement garage toward a car. Moments later, Jack Ruby wearing his fedora, stepped out from the mob of detectives and reporters and fired a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver at Oswald's chest. Oswald died at 1:07 p.m.

First you should know a bit more about Ruby.  He operated a strip joint called the Carousel Club. In addition to the local contacts he made through his strip club, he was very social, and made his daily rounds in Dallas visited acquaintances around Dallas. He'd hit the bank, the Statler Hilton, the police station, the courthouse, the bail-bond office, the Doubleday Book Store, the delicatessen, the shoeshine parlor, radio station KLIF. He actually bought that Colt cobra through a police friend of his, Joe Cody to avoid paying sales tax. 

KLIF was owned by Gordon McLendon. Born in Paris TX in 1921, graduate of Yale, and sports  director at WYBC in New Haven, CT. He made a name for himself at the Liberty Broadcasting System. Liberty was a network that mainly broadcast "recreated" baseball games starting in 1948. Reputedly many listeners were not aware the broadcasters were not announcing the live events. [LINK]Ruby once identified McLendon as “the world’s greatest American.” In those days at Liberty McLendon was billing himself as “the Old Scotchman.” He had founded KLIF in 1947.  Ruby name dropped him in his hand-written confession. Later in his career McLendon became a right-wing radio wonk, and made a failed senate run. His career stalled a bit when he started a campaign to ban suggestive songs like “Yellow Submarine” and “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”

He also name-dropped KLIF, DJ Russ Knight, better known as The Weird Beard.(No connection to the WAKY weird beard.)  When FBI Agents found Knight's personal phone numbers in Ruby's possession he won an interview. He had been at KLIF since 1960 and left in 1964 for a spot at WXYZ. Somewhere in there he was also on KILT. Knight had known Ruby for a year and had hung out with him half a dozen times, even taking his wife to the Carousel Club. Ruby for his part, ran ads for the club on Knights program at KLIF. [SOURCE]

Another familiar name that pops up at Liberty is sound man Wes Wise. Back in the 50s he was doing foley work to fake baseball games. Somehow he moved from there to at sports director for WFAA in 1961.  By 1963 Wes Wise was at KRLD-TV (CBS).  He was there with Bob Huffaker. He testified that he bumped into Ruby at the now infamous School book Depository building that Saturday Nov. 23rd; just a day before the assassination. In 1971 Wes Wise would be elected Mayor of Dallas, and he'd serve 3 terms despite being originally from Shreveport, LA. It's worth nothing that Wise kicked off a conspiracy theory in December of 1963 taking poor notes about a possible Oswald sighting. He got a plate number correct but the wrong color and make of the car. By random chance (ahem) the car listed was owned by a Carl Mather at Collins Radio, a company that worked with military communications for the CIA. [SOURCE]  

According to Ruby's own account, he he was trying to find a local disc jockey from KLIF and went into the police station to locate him to deliver some sandwiches from Phil's Delicatessen. He worked his way around the police station, and found instead some staff from KBOX. He asked for  KLIF's Gary DeLaune. Witness Willian Duncan Jr. testified that Ruby delivered sandwiches and soda to KLIF around 1:30 on Friday Nov. 22nd. He asked about DJ Russ Knight and left after 20-30 minutes. More here.   

Gary would see Ruby again when Oswald was shot. DeLaune was standing right next to photographer Bob Jackson when the latter took his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. Gary's 's presence begat a conspiracy theory of it's own since Jack Ruby had a few connections to KLIF. Despite personally knowing Ruby, DeLaune testified that all he saw was "figure with a gun."  More here. Delaune later worked in Houston, then moved to San Antonio in the early 1970s to cover the San Antonio Spurs. Eventually he joined the sports broadcasting team at KENS-TV where he stayed for decades until his retirement.

Was there any more to any of this?  Probably.  But knowing DJs as I do... the basis of these friendships was probably free sandwiches, and drinks at the carousel club. It an unusual event where in covering the news of one crime find a dozen DJs testifying in the trial over another related crime. I can't think of another event like this one in that one respect.

The History of LGBT Radio (Part 5)

Volume 4, number 34 of the Gay Community News listed five LGBT radio programs in it's calendar. This was more than I expected even in the relatively liberal North East.

SUN 7:30 pm — Come Out Tonight 94.3 WYBC New Haven, CT 

SUN 10:30 am — Closet Space 740 WCAS-AM Cambridge, MA

WED 10:15 pm — Gaybreak Radio 91.1 WMUA Amherst, MA 

TUE 8:00 pm — Gay Way Radio 90.9 WBUR Boston, MA

MON 8:00 pm — None of the Above 91.3 WWUH West Hartford, CT

Aside from John Zeh's reference in his quote in Lavender Culture the show also is referred to in a Yale AIDS memorial and a 1977 report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus. [LINK]

"Yalesbians was established in September of 1975. Because the Gay Alliance at Yale was primarily male, we felt that a separate group would minister more directly to our position as women and gays. Though the two groups meet separately we have continued to work with the men's group. Aside from sharing an office with G.A.Y. a nightly telephone counseling and information service, produce a weekly hour-long radio show for WYBC and run a speakers bureau."  

The time line here is a bit muddled. We know that the Yalesbians were involved with Come Out Tonight, but that does not mean that they weren't producing another radio program which pre-dated it. The Encyclopedia of Lesbian Histories and Cultures by Bonnie Zimmerman specifically noted that WYBC aired a lesbian soap opera in 1970 called "The Liberation of Lydia." In that context it's important to note that Yale was an male-only institution until 1969. [SOURCE]  WYBC was one of the first student organizations to agreed to admitting women. The Connecticut Gay Task Force (CGTF) also was involved in the Come Out Tonight program. It's referenced in an article by Dai Thompson:

"...Other recent events include a panel on homosexuality... which was a part of a Yale course on Human Sexuality. This year’s panel was reported to have been a lot livelier than previous years. Quite a few of the 250 members of the audience seemed offended by the obvious closeness of the panel’s members, most of whom are members of the C.G.T.F. and regular contributors to WYBC’s “Come Out Tonight” program, Southern Connecticut’s only gay radio show..."

Just from these two references we can assume the program was on air in 1977. But this memorial page [LINK] for Jack Winkler puts the start of the program in 1976. It states that he helped produce “Come Out Tonight,” an hour-long gay radio show broadcast every Sun­day on WYBC. The show was the work of a dedicated group of about twenty people, both men from the Gay Alliance and women from Yales­bians. Perhaps most famous of that contingent now is Tara Ayres. She worked for 35 years in community radio first at WYBC, then at WORT in Madison as an anchor and producer for Her Turn, a feminist radio news collective and Queery, a program about LGBTQ

Over at WCAS-AM Loretta Lotman was one of the producers of Closet Space, at the same time she was Media Director at the National Gay Task Force. She later became a contributor for the Village Voice.  Unusually, the show aired from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM on Sunday mornings, literally airing between religious programs.The show included news, a calendar of events, skits, interviews. Also producing was Ellen Davis of the Gay Community News. More here.

The first reference I can find to Closet Space is in a 1974 issue of WIN (Workshop in Nonviolence Institute).  Contemporary references show this program was still on air in 1976 and 1977. It's even still listed in an October 1980 issue of The Heights [LINK] so it appears to have lasted until WCAS-AM signed off in May of 1981 following their bankruptcy filing.

Gaybreak Radio aired on 91.1 WMUA, bi-weekly, on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month at 10:15 PM Wednesday nights. I can tell from issues of the Massachusetts daily collegian that it aired from at least 1975 through 1977. It was developed and produced by Scott Bacherman and hosted by Demian and Brian Egan through at least early 1977. In a September 1975, host Demian posted an announcement in the Out Front newspaper soliciting lesbians to help produce programming for the show.

In a 1979 filing with the FCC for station WPOE, Poets seat broadcasting includes a bit of Bacherman's resume.  It describes the founding of the Gaybreak program in 1972 as a 30 minute show, then in 1974  through 1976 as an hour long show before he left the station. We have no reason to think that's inaccurate, even if it may omit the names of other people involved in the program.

The resume neglected to mention that he was also program manager of WMUA in 1974. Bacherman also developed a feminist program called "Woman's Show."  In 1975 he won a UPI Tom Phillips award for documentary excellence. By 1986 he was a VP at TM Communications.  There's a nice retro 80's video of Scott opening WPOE on Youtube here.

None of The Above aired from at least 1975 through 1977. Eric Gordon for his part describes his involvement as having co-produced the show with Michael Jospe, his partner at the time. It's time slot was Mondays at 8:00 PM on 91.3 WWUH in West Hartford, CT. Interestingly, he seems to have been taping the program and re-broadcasting it on 91.7 WHUS in Storrs, CT on Wednesdays from 8:30 to 9:30 at least in 1977. [SOURCE] WWUH has a history page [LINK] which has two entries relevant to the program beyond what you might derive from the anarchist advert above. I also found an unrelated resume of Jan Keywell, then of Manchester Community College, who appears to have been connected to the program. [LINK]

Eric Gordon first appears in the staff listing in 1975.  There are no other mentions of him until 1977 and it's not for a compliment. In the February 15th 1977 Executive Committee (ECOM) meeting minutes there is a mention of a problem with an anonymous male announcer refusing to sign the programs logs. Apparently the unnamed announcer disagreed with the content of a tape. The February 9th tape was a recording of the show None of the Above, and his objection was to the content of a program. PD Joe Rudich must have agreed with his reticence as he subsequently blocked the program from being aired. He also had not previewed the tape and was concerned about "language". In response the Committee decided to make it mandatory for the Program Director to audition all tapes before airplay.

The program didn't last much longer than that. The program was terminated by the Committee on March 4th of 1977 and it sounds like it was dramatic. We can deduce that Eric Gordon was suspended for a month after the February 15th meeting. We also see that he was interviewed by or wrote an article for the Advocate which was critical of WWUH. I am pretty sure he foresaw how it was going to end and selected the nuclear option. I can't blame him.

"...because of language utilized in a recently aired radio play. According to station records, the show and producer had been suspended for a month previously due to the airing of "offensive" language, material that was most likely in violation of FCC rules. The termination came as a direct result of the producers negative comments about WWUH in the Advocate and after his refusal to abide by FCC and station policies as determined by the ECOM. "

But out of all of these shows, Gay Way Radio has the most uncertain history. From the 1977 calendar we know that Gay Way Radio was on WBUR at that time. Furthermore from the Gay Jubilee: A Guidebook to Gay Boston, 1980 edition we know it was still on air when that was compiled. Sadly the description is very terse "Weekly radio gay talk show. Accepts phone calls from listeners. Aired each Tuesday evening at 8:30 pm on FM 90.9 WBUR."  From that all I can can tell is that it was pushed back half an hour since 1977.  A 1975 issue of Ms. Magazine lists Ann McGuire as host as does Sexual Preference, Volume 84 but as "Co-Moderator" in 1977.

But the book For People, Not for Profit: A History of Fenway Health's First Forty Years by Thomas Martorelli specifically puts the start of the program a bit earlier:

"In 1971, WBUR-FM, Boston University's radio station, launched a new show, “The Gay Way,” hosted by Elaine Noble, who would become the first openly lesbian candidate elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1975."

The book Women's Yellow Pages published in 1973 corroborates Noble as host. But our 1977 calendar lists Joe Martin as the host. Perhaps there were rotating hosts, or co-hosts, or different hosts over time.  Ironically it's an article on wbur.org itself that further confuses the topic. They list San Francisco native John Ward as host in the mid 1970s.  He founded the group Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, GLAD. That article points the finger at Boston University president John Silber as the programs assassin.

"He also hosted a program called "Gay Way" on WBUR until the longtime president of Boston University, John Silber, decided to take it off the air. "I was just starting out. I had an office in Park Square, 300 bucks a month," Ward said. "And [Silber] was determined to suppress this radio program, which was very successful — and he did."

This would be a dramatic end to the program if we can cast the villain correctly. But the book Dinner with Mobutu by Jake Smith names Station Manager Jane Christo as the killer. Perhaps it's more complicated, Jane as the instrument of John Silber, or Maybe Silber's ire was a coincidence.

Jane [Christo] had only recently been appointed station manager, and she was working hard to change the format of the station from the traditional NPR format — classical music, late-night jazz,  and a little news and public affairs — to a heavier concentration on news and public affairs. She had already offended the homosexual community in Boston by cancelling the program "Gay Way" and she was the target of picketing by some members of the black community for cancelling another program "Say Brother." Neither issue seemed to bother her very much."

Jane is considered a success today by many. [LINK] To be fair, the listenership of WBUR did grow from 60,000 to 400,000 between 1979 and 1994. You can even credit her with bringing in Car Talk, one of the most successful NPR programs ever. But she was also known as a vindictive sociopath.  "She possessed a short temper and a vulgar mouth and was known for holding grudges, sometimes for years, waiting for the right moment to exact revenge."[SOURCE] But like most despots, what took her down wasn't the abandonment of a community... it was the nepotism.

IBS vs The Ivy Network

There are a number of annual radio conferences running today. NAB of course is the large commercial conference and CMJ is usually considered the bigger of the college focal conferences: IBS, CBI etc. IBS of course is the oldest but it's ivy league roots have really kept it inside it's own social enclave and there is a strange long story to explain why.

The history of student broadcasting in Ivy League schools starts early. WBRU and WHCN founded IBS in February 1940. George Abraham a student at Brown interconnected half a dozen radios in his building so they could all hear his classical recordings. It went so well he expanded service to a dorm across the street, then the rest of the campus. Eventually 100 radios were tied to his "Brown Network" with 16,000 feet of cable. Programming began in earnest. The Brown University station WBRU was the first on air in 1940.

Harvard followed them in 1943 with WHCN graduating from their own carrier current system. You may nto recognize those calls because WHCN only used those calls until 1951 when they broke off from the campus newspaper and became WHRV. These two stations founded the first college network, IBS the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System.

IBS was founded by the intrepid engineer being WBRU George Abraham, and his cohort David Borst. they were still undergraduates at the time. By 1947 there were five members in the IBS: WDBS at Dartmouth, WHRV at Harvard, WXPN at U. Pennsylvania, WPRU at Princeton, and WYBC at Yale. WPRU at the time was broadcasting just through the universities electrical system. In 1956 they applied for a FM license but had to change calls because a ship at sea was using the WPRU calls.

In 1943 WVBR Cornell, WDCR Dartmouth, WPRU Princeton, and WYBC Yale split off from IBS and formed their own network called the Ivy Network. WXPN Pennsylvania joined in 1948. It's offices remained based at Yale in New Haven, CT. More here. At a conference in 1951 they met and accept ed a contract to allow Ivy stations to broadcast the nationally-heard "Philip Morris Play House." NBC was to install dedicated telephone lines to enable syndication. In 1953 the NBC tie was expanded with a contract to carry more programs. The Ford motor company sponsored a classical music program. More here. WKCR at Columbia University joined sometime in the 1950s.

What's most important to remember here is that these were all AM stations and were permitted to run advertising. It's only when they moved to the FM band they were restricted to non-commercial licenses that forbid advertising. IBS and The Ivy Network shared member stations. Some texts even have WBRU carrying programs via the Ivy Network after 1952, effectively merging the two splinter groups. I assumed originally that this marked the end of the Ivy Network but it did not. In 1960 a small group of stations from the Rural Radio Network began calling themselves "The Ivy Network." This had to create brand confusion. So I assumed that had to be after the end of the Ivy Network. That was wrong too.

In February of 1961 an issue of Billboard refers to IBS and the Ivy Network as the two largest college radio networks. The article was written by Jim Cameron of WLVR, the college radio station of Lehigh University. This was not a misinformed outsider. Clearly both IBS and Ivy were still operating in the early 1970s in some capacity. And it seems to be true. In 1966 the eight existing Ivy Network stations invited 11 more: Boston College, Colgate U. Middlebury College, M.I.T., N.Y.U., Lehigh, St. Lawrence, Union, and American University. Again many of these were still carrier current stations. One piece I read indicated that a slew of Boston area stations joined Ivy at the end: WTBU, WZBC, WBRS, WHRB, WTBS, WZLY and WBRU. I have some trouble crediting this as the network ceased to exist shortly thereafter. In 1969 the Network had a reporter Linda Sutter give a report by phone live from Woodstock. That was taped and survived to appear at a recent auction. More here.

I cant seem to find a firm date where the Network ended. But I think i know what happened. The growth in FM undermined their ability to sell advertising. A WYBC history spells it out "During the late 1970s and 1980s, WYBC fell into financial trouble due to declining student interest." Yale went through a rough patch in which 94.3 was LMA'd to COX radio, and their AM stick sold off outright. They had a resurgence in 1998 with 1340 a new license but they were the lynchpin for The Network. One record I found has Stan Federman, WXPN manager, named president o f the Ivy Network and the Network HQ relocating to U. Penn. So WYBC implodes, Ivy relocated around WXPN which was already moving to FM themselves. It fell apart gradually losing importance and being more fully absorbed into IBS.

Docket 80-90

The non-commercial FM radio band stretches from 88.1 to 91.9. This is a significant enough piece of RF real estate that exceedingly few non-com licenses have been granted outside it. In fact, I suspect that since the band was set aside, fewer than a dozen exceptions have been granted.In 1980, as the non-com band started to fill up in most major metropolitan areas there was a little pressure on the FCC and congress to make room. Their response was Docket 80-90, 94 FCC 2d 152, 48 Fed. Reg. 29496 (1983). The rule grandfathered the existing short spaced stations and reduced minimum mileage separation between new changes. It also limited new licenses to a maximum ERP of 3 KW, HAAT being 328' or 100 meters. Weaker stations = more stations crammed in. But it did not increase the spacing requirements between Class A and second- and third-adjacent channel Class B stations. Also interesting was that it allowed full-power stations to move-in on Class D stations. forcing some off air. Even though the stated purpose of the rules were to Increase the Availability of FM Broadcast Assignments.

The legislation was piece-meal, ugly and political. Politics make for poor engineering. Yet despite the encroachment on the non-coms, there are some class A, B, C and D operations still in the commercial band. Three class and A & B stations come to mind immediately
WBRU 95.5 in Providence, RI (Brown University)
WHRB 95.3 in Cambridge, MA (Harvard University)
WYBC 94.3FM in New Haven, CT (Yale University)
WPRB 103.3 in Princeton, NJ (Princeton University)

It's worth noting that there are college-owned stations with commercial licenses out there. I think KCFS, KMSM, and WHUR all fit that description. There's also stations like WOMR in Provincetown, MA on 92.1 that were originally in the NCE band (91.9 in this case) but agreed to change frequency to improve their signal in some way (avoid co-channel interference with WUMB in Boston, across Cape Cod Bay, in this case).