webcastboy said:
And let's not forget that many of the college stations around Boston have been SCREAMING for volunteers to come in and do shows for over a decade now.
Actually, not nearly as many as there used to be. Maybe WMFO and WBRS, but bear in mind that their signals are practically non-existant in Boston's inner city, where the audience for the ethnic and urban programming on the city pirates is. WBRS actually used to get Boston's neighborhoods on a quality receiver, but it has been cut up in the area by WWFX since it raised power almost a decade ago. WMFO is pretty much blanked out in the inner city by WMLN from Curry College in Milton, which generally does not accept community volunteers as far as I know.
WMBR at MIT stopped accepting new outside community volunteers a couple of years ago. At this time they are not actively kicking out those of us who are "grandfathered" in, but the current student management is trying to comply with MIT's edict that the station must be at least 50% student, and it's now at about 48%.
Incidentally, there are two community hosted Haitian programs on WMBR back-to-back on Sunday mornings from 6-10 AM, and those two programs get the highest Arbitron ratings of all programs on WMBR. Higher than the weekday morning alt-rock shows that WMBR has been best known for for thirty years, higher than anything else on their schedule. But, WMBR has never cared about ratings, and is not about to begin to.
We all know that WERS doesn't accept outside community volunteers. WZBC may still accept a limited amount these days, but they only program ethnic shows in a few certain weekend slots and they are not going to change their weekday programming formats from (mostly) student hosted alt-rock in the daytime and avant-garde experimental sounds at night.
WHRB mainly only accepts community volunteers as temporaries during the summer, and again, their usual programming and image doesn't seem likely they would accept the kinds of ethnic programming offered by the city pirates.
WRBB at Northeastern, with a decent signal in the South End, J.P., Roxbury and North Dorchester, used to have a lot of urban programming at night (perhaps trying to take up where the old WILD-AM left off after sundown signoff), but I don't know what happened over there. It sounds like student rock-based programming at most times these days. Urban shows are now relegated to weekend evenings, and also sound student hosted. Perhaps Northeastern students on-campus complained that the more community based station WRBB used to be wasn't serving their needs, I don't know, but it no longer sounds like a viable station for the ethnic and urban programming on the pirates.
And, those are all the college stations that can be heard in the city proper. (WBUR and WUMB are college based professional formatted Public Radio stations, so I'm not including them). College radio in this area is generally not the outlet for community programming that it once was. The only other legal route for ethnic programming is to buy airtime on brokered commercial AM stations.
