WCRW was the Westminster College Radio Workshop, and had been for many years before I arrived on campus at the small Presbyterian college in western Pensylvania. The studios were located in the basement of the library building.

The equipment was primitive. The record collection was small, and one of the rooms was littered with artifacts from radio’s past: a transcription machine, 16″ disks of audio no one would ever play again, and a large sheet of metal that had once rattled with the sound of thunder for a “live” radio dramatic show.

Besides being the initials for what was essentially the campus radio “club,” WCRW became the call letters for a closed circuit, carrier current radio station. One could hardly call it broadcasting. The signal, what there was of it, went by wire to the nearest women’s dorms on the quadrangle, and then was pushed through the electrical wiring of the dorms by very low power transmitters. If the women knew there was a campus station, if they knew where on the low end of the AM dial they could tune it in, and if they knew what the limited hours of operation were, they’d no doubt have enjoyed the music of the Four Seasons, Barry McGuire, the Beatles, and The Animals. But there is no evidence any Westminster College woman ever actually heard the station’s signal.

I entered the college in the fall of 1962 and was immediately intrigued by WCRW’s presence in McGill Library. It sounded like a top prospect for my extra-curricular campus life. But I had auditioned for a play and had been surprised to get a role, and put off the radio station until second semester. Thus the 1963 beginning of my radio experience. And this 60 year reminiscence.

An upperclass student handed me a news script when I tried out. And I was assigned to “do the news.” Now, the station was only on the air (well, not really “on the air,” but we called it that) for a handful of hours each day, so my time at the studio was quite limited. We had no news wire (that is, a teletype machine), so my job was to copy news stories from the morning’s Pittsburgh newspaper and do a three or four minute newscast that was taped for use each hour.

In looking back at that experience, I smile at the idea that we did have a few listeners. In warmer weather, three or four people might listen to the Beach Boys sing out of the open radio studio windows as a fellow student played deejay.

Eventually I was given a weekly timeslot for a music show. I hadn’t been into rock music or contemporary hits in my high school days, so I played jazz, mostly big band music from my own LP collection, along with a few albums I found in the station library. I called the program “Bandstand,” never connecting it to the Dick Clark version on TV. I have one particular tune I recall from the WCRW records: Ted Heath and “Harlem Nocturn.” Whenever I hear that piece today, I recall WCRW.

Next time, I’ll write of our transition to actually getting “on the air,” creating taped programs for a local FM station. Exciting days.