The result: most students skip by 95.3 on their FM dial.

According to a recent informal Crimson survey, more than three-quarters of students who listen to the radio do not listen to WHRB, either because they dislike the station's format, or they are simply unaware of the station.

"Increasing student listenership is valued, but not key to the station's long-term survival," Vasan says. "We see our-selves as a commercial radio station in the Boston market filling a unique listening niche."

The relative lack of attention to students is disappointing to some, especially those who had dreams of their own talk shows on college radio.

Thomas L. Hobbs '99 says he didn't comp the station because "my music interest and theirs didn't match at all."

WHRB Comp Director Matthew A. Carter '99, who is a Crimson editor, acknowledges there have been potential compers who are turned off by the station's musical tastes, but says WHRB is not and should not be the place on campus where everyone can play everything they want on the air.

"We're not claiming to be the Massachusetts College of Communications," Carter says "Most people enter college with the idea that [student radio] is a musical free-for-all--spinning disks with and for your friends. I imagine--were we to serve the tastes of the student body--we might fold."

Carter adds that "there are other radio stations in the Boston-area that have a community philosophy," and interested students who are unwilling to give WHRB a try could look for a job there.

While he calls the plight of budding deejays who don't share WHRB's tastes "unfortunate," Vasan says the station is ultimately about its programming.

"We draw upon Harvard resources, namely students, to produce a product for the world beyond Harvard," Vasan writes. "The only preconception I see as holding this perspective back is the notion of college radio as a media for and about students."

In other words, students should not expect WHRB to cater to their musical interests--or serve as their launch pad to the airwaves.

"Not every student group on campus need exist for the purpose of satisfying the tastes and needs of other students," agrees Undergraduate Council President Beth A. Stewart '00. "Only the U.C., in my judgement, has an inherent responsibility to be responsive to the whole campus. Other groups such as The Crimson or the IOP [Institute of Politics] may choose to be responsive because it fits with some larger mission, but they may just as well decide that responsiveness is not a priority."

Last week's Crimson survey found several students who cited the recent Ella Fitzgerald orgy as "awesome."

From the station's standpoint, it is great that there are students who like WHRB's programming.

But for everyone who does not, there are other radio stations in Boston.