WTBS call-letters to be leaving Atlanta in October. Could WMBR regain WTBS ?

[pqgeorge]

Turner Broadcasting is planning to ditch the local Atlanta based WTBS call-letters (on Atlanta's Channel 17) in October, to be replaced with WPCH ("Peachtree TV"). Apparently, they want to concentrate their local Channel 17 service to the Atlanta Metro. No changes are to be made with the National feed of TBS (the cable feed). Could and would WMBR/88.1 consider reverting back to their original WTBS call-letters once Turner changes the Channel 17 call-letters? If MIT would like to regain the WTBS call-letters, I'm wondering if they should get in touch Time/Warner to insure nobody tries to do some pre-emptive strike. Any thoughts?

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Could and would WMBR/88.1 consider reverting back to their original WTBS call-letters once Turner changes the Channel 17 call-letters? If MIT would like to regain the WTBS call-letters, I'm wondering if they should get in touch Time/Warner to insure nobody tries to do some pre-emptive strike. Any thoughts?

I doubt they would bother for a few reasons. One is that I doubt they would feel that it's worth spending money on filing for a change in call letters. Also, they would have to give up the recognition they have built with the WMBR call letters for almost thirty years now. For example, a lot of web listeners have bookmarked their website and audio streams with the WMBR website URL, and those would all change. I guess they could be set up to autoforward from the WMBR URL to a new WTBS URL, but that's all probably not worth the bother.

The students who currently manage WMBR day-to-day weren't even born back when the station was WTBS, so they don't have "nostalgia" for the old call letters. It is possible that some people on the station trustee board, the non-profit board of station and MIT alums who hold the license which is called the "Technology Broadcasting Corporation", could harken back to those days and want to do something, but I think even that is unlikely to actually happen.

I'm sure that the institution of MIT itself wouldn't care. The radio station was never the school's idea in the first place. Students originally built it as an independent electronics project, and put it on the air 46 years ago. MIT partially funds it from the same Student Activities fund as any other on-campus student club (which provides about 20% of the stations yearly funding, the rest comes from an annual on-air pledge week) which is why they mandate that it be student-run and at least 50% student staffed like any other on-campus student activity, but beyond that, MIT is not concerned.