WMBR
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| City | Cambridge, Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Greater Boston |
| Slogan | First on your FM Dial |
| Frequency | 88.1 MHz |
| First air date | April 10, 1961 |
| Format | Freeform |
| ERP | 720 watts |
| HAAT | 90 meters |
| Class | A |
| Facility ID | 64683 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 42°21′42.00″N 71°5′3.00″W / 42.3616667°N 71.0841667°W |
| Callsign meaning | Walker Memorial Basement Radio |
| Former callsigns | WTBS (1961–1979) |
| Owner | Technology Broadcasting Corporation |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | www |
WMBR is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's student-run college radio station, licensed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and broadcasting on 88.1 FM. It is all-volunteer and funded by listener donations and MIT funds. Both students and community members can apply for positions, and like many college radio stations, WMBR offers diverse programming.
As of September 2016, the general manager is Jon Beaulieu and the program director is Jenny Chen.
The station's board of trustees is the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, whose members are appointed by the President of MIT. The officers are: President - Marianna Parker; Vice President - Anne Slinn; Clerk - Todd Glickman; Treasurer - Shawn Mamros.
WMBR is the third set of call letters for the station.
The first MIT student broadcasting station first signed on as WMIT on November 25, 1946. It had a "carrier current" AM transmitter located in the Ware entryway of Senior House dormitory and broadcast over power lines at 800, and later 640 kHz (called "kilocycles" at the time). Audible only within a few hundred feet of the dorms, under FCC Part 15 regulations it could and did broadcast commercials and was self-supporting. The station simultaneously provided audio signals of its broadcasts over "dorm line" wires that ran past exterior windows of the MIT dormitories, for residents to connect to their hi-fi gear. An early experiment in stereo broadcasting, in 1960, put one stereo channel on the AM signal and the other on the dorm lines.
In the mid-1950s, the possibility of an FM license was explored and it was discovered that the call letters WMIT were (and still are) in use by a North Carolina station serving the Asheville area. WTBS (for "Technology Broadcasting System") was chosen as the best alternative. New facilities were constructed in the basement of Walker Memorial, including a switching and mixing console designed by A. R. Kent and Barry Blesser, believed to be one of the first all-transistorized consoles ever built. On April 10, 1961, WTBS-FM signed on with 14 watts of effective radiated power at 88.1 Megahertz FM.
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