"I don't really think students don't know where to turn for the music they want to hear," Carter says.

A Unique Arrangement

As a not-for-profit commercial radio station, WHRB's operating costs are not covered by the University.

The station, which moved its transmitter from the top of Holyoke Center to One Financial Center in Boston after a fundraising drive in 1995, sells on-air advertising to subsist, and plays the time-tested music that its loyal listeners enjoy.

"If we were to allow students to have their own `shows' on any musical selection, our air would become fragmented, more so than it already is," Vasan writes. "This would reduce our commercial viability. In radio broadcasting, format fragmentation is extremely harmful for long-term viability."

According to Alexandra J. McCormack '00, WHRB general manager, many of the station's listeners have been following the station for years. In the literature it prepares for potential advertisers, WHRB states that it appeals to the educated, affluent Cambridge audience.

"Our listeners have well-developed tastes," McCormack says. "We're filling a niche in programming that makes us very valuable in the greater Boston area. The idea is to give our audience something original--something that they won't find anywhere else."

Most students, Appel realizes, are turned off by bands like Vomit Launch and Meat Puppets.

The Record Hospital, the underground rock department at WHRB, plays "very obscure, difficult, weird, odd sounds that, for the most part, Harvard students don't seem to like to listen to," Appel says.

But a "small sector of society finds it blissful and beautiful," and Appel says HRB is "fulfilling a pretty important role for those who depend on us for unconventional [music]."

It was the "spirit of not pandering to the prevailing idea of what rock music should be like" that compelled Chris A. Hunter '02 to comp the station.

"There's more out there than the Stone Temple Pilots," Hunter says. "Most people don't know that or don't care enough to find out."

Carter says WHRB offers its listeners "an invitation to broaden your tastes."

Station Vice President Danit Lewin '99 agrees. "We don't want to be a CRB [102.5 FM] or a Kiss 108," Lewin says. "There's just too many of them."

Because the station is non-profit, there is less pressure to placate every listener's tastes.