Radio at Harvard had its beginnings in 1939, when a group of students began experimenting with methods to send programs over a limited area. At the same time, another group of students had formed a Radio Workshop, to study the techniques of the radio industry--then still in its infancy--and produce their own radio programming. Various different attempts at achieving a satisfactory closed-circuit radio system were tried during 1939 and early 1940; by December of 1940, success arrived.
The Harvard Crimson (Cambridge's Sometimes-breakfast daily) was approached to underwrite the expenses of building and maintaining the radio facility. Soon, the Harvard Crimson Network was broadcasting on a closed-circuit system using the call letters WHCN; the Crimson had spawned a Radio Board to operate the station. The arrangement was not a particularly happy one for the members of the Radio Board, though; the Crimson exercised control over its operations, and feared that an independent station might compete with it for advertising dollars.
By 1943, a split was inevitable. The station changed its name to the Harvard Radio Voice, severed its connections with the Crimson, and used the call letters WHRV. Members of the new Harvard station were instrumental in forming two organizations of college stations, the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System, and the Ivy Network. By representing the emerging college stations as a group. IBS was able to get the Federal Communications Commission to take college radio into account in some early decisions. The Ivy Network, on the other hand, was intended to provide for program exchanges and represent its members as a group in approaching advertisers.
Members of the station were an innovative group, and not constrained by the usual limits imposed on broadcasters. An early program, "Wolf Line," which attempted to increase relations between Harvard men and Radcliffe women, was possible only because of the campus-limited nature of the transmissions.
On February 1, 1951, the station was incorporated as a non-profit organization, the Harvard Radio Broadcasting, Inc. The call letters, WHRB, were still heard only on the Harvard campus. The station was, naturally, interested in increasing its potential listening audience, and soon applied for an available FM channel. WHRB-FM signed on the air on May 17, 1957, at a frequency of 107.1 megaHertz--serving the Cambridge area with a power of 96 watts.
After several changes in power and frequency, WHRB-FM arrived where it is today in the fall of 1967, when stereo broadcasts began. For nearly three decades, WHRB broadcasted from its main transmitter in Harvard Square. In 1995, WHRB moved its main transmitter site to One Financial Center, the tallest building in Downtown Boston (above South Station). From this new location, WHRB reaches nearly all communities in the Greater Boston area.