Why Temple University Operates WRTI-FM

by John B. Roberts, Director
Radio & Television Division,
Temple University

The following is written by John B. Roberts and reprinted from the WRTI Program Guide, April 1958 issue.


This pamphlet is a guide to radio programs such as you will find on no other station in the Philadelphia area, because WRTI-FM is completely different from all other Philadelphia stations. Programs on WRTI-FM are designed to please you not today but ten years from now! That's what makes them completely unique. Almost all other radio stations try to present programs you like as of now; they conduct elaborate surveys of listening habits, try to determine what music and news you like best, and then schedule exactly that kind of program.

WRTI-FM conducts many of the same kind of surveys. In fact, WRTI-FM surveys are much more "in depth", as the audience analysts like to say. But WRTI-FM tries to project its programs as much as ten years into the future, because the Temple University stations is training the broadcasters who will be familiar radio voices in your household ten years from now, just as many of the WRTI-FM broadcasters of a few years ago are among your radio favorites of today.

WRTI-FM is operated by the Radio and Television Division of Temple University as a laboratory for teaching the young men and women who will be operating the big commercial and educational stations of the future. It is a laboratory in which the radio and television majors in one of the nation's largest undergraduate curriculums in radio and television can get daily practical experience to supplement the work of their other college courses. These young men and women, when they graduate, will have a broadly based and solid educational foundation in the traditional academic sense, but in addition, they will have the kind of practical experience that gives new meaning to their general background and which makes them valuable members of the broadcast industry.

Of course, what you hear on radio is only part of the practical education of these future experts in communications. They are also busy in the television studios of WFIL-TV, which has made its own elaborately-equipped studios available to Temple University for instruction in television. It was WFIL, in fact, which helped inspire the creation of the radio and television curriculum at Temple University, a curriculum described by Variety as "the first college curriculum in the country with a major in radio and television designed to train future professional broadcasters", with the aid of a financial grant to aid in the construction of Temple University's own radio facilities.

The WFIL partnership fits well into the Temple University plan of looking ten years ahead, because WFIL has a proud record of firsts in the television industry. Not only was WFIL one of the first stations in the country to express concern about where the qualified broadcasters of the future were coming from and to offer financial assistance to the University to help prepare them, it was one of the first to put an FM station on the air; one of the first with facsimile broadcasting, a venture in which Temple University later helped to send a newspaper "through the air." Temple University and WFIL cooperated, at the very birth of the University radio and television curriculum, to be the first in the world ever to broadcast simultaneously over AM radio, FM radio, TV, and facsimile. Later Temple University and WFIL-TV cooperated to produce the nation's first regularly scheduled network discussion program on television. Temple University joined the area universities with WFIL in creating the award-winning "TV University of the Air", the biggest single educational effort by any commercial station up to that time. This same tendency to look ahead has also put WFIL in the vanguard of technical progress and has made it possible for Temple University radio and television students to be familiar with television equipment at the WFIL-TV studios which may appear at other television studio several years hence. WFIL-TV, for example, was one of the first stations to try the smaller television cameras, new lighting techniques. At the moment it is the first independently-owned station in the nation to receive the Ampex video tape recorder which can record pictures on magnetic tape; it is among the first to broadcast stereophonic sound; and WFIL and a sister-owned station are the first television stations in the nation to stay on the air 24 hours a day.

Although a close liaison between a station and a university both of which are constantly looking far ahead fits in well with the WRTI-FM program structure, don't underestimate the WRTI-FM broadcasters you will hear on 90.1 on your FM dial. Far from being awed by the accomplishments of the friendly commercial broadcasters, and perhaps partly as a result of the inspiration derived therefrom, the WRTI-FM broadcasters are a constant source of fresh ideas. And many of the ideas you will hear on WRTI-FM you will hear on commercial stations in the area several years hence as the student who tried them out first on WRTI-FM joins the staff of the local television and radio stations. Some of those beautifully-directed shows you see on WCAU- TV carry the unmistakable of the skilled craftsmanship of former WRTI'ers Jerry Samuelsohn and Jimmy Hirshfeld. The clear and comprehensive news coverage of WRCV is directed by Ernie Leiss, who once was WRTI News Director while a student at Temple University. And other WRCV newsmen like Allan Rusten and Jim Farrell play an important part in WRCV's news preparation. When summer comes and you watch the Phillies on television, you'll recognize Bob Graham, a former WRTI Station Manager, doing the commercials for Atlantic.

The WRTI-FM staff works on the most ambitious programming in the Philadelphia area. You'll hear more "live" programs on WRTI-FM than any Philadelphia station, more drama, more live music, more live discussions, and more live features, than any station in the area. The WRTI-FM staffers admit that some of their live music, for example, is not as good from the standpoint of musicianship, as you'll hear on a recording played by another station. But it's live and you'll sense the excitement of an almost forgotten experience in this era of the long-playing record, the ‘45, and tape-recording. These are college students at work, eager, alert, original, proud of their University and their radio station. Tune your radio to 90.1 on your FM dial and leave it there for just three days, and you'll find there the proper medicine for tired old radio habits. You'll be amazed by the skill with which students can report basketball games, baseball, and football. You'll be pleasantly surprised to hear young people who like classical music and who do not feel compelled to pontificate about it. You'll suddenly realize there are young people who are aware of and using the splendid cultural facilities of Philadelphia, its museums, libraries, and theatres. You'll find that these are bright young people who find the process of learning exciting and stimulating, spirit. Perhaps you will be caught up in the possibilities of live, vigorous, young radio that you'll want to write in, offer constructive comments, criticisms, and suggestions. Perhaps you'll want to look ten years ahead in your own future growth and then tell us what you'd like these young men and women to have ready for your audio and video appetite in 1968.

This is the WRTI Old Gang Web Site.