Radio

The Clean Ear Act

by Jumana Farouky

WECB is sick of being Emerson College's other radio station. WERS 88.9 FM may be one of the nation's most highly acclaimed college radio stations, but student-run WECB, which has no FCC-delegated air space, has long been pumping college rock through phone lines into Emerson's dorms and buildings. The station went online January 31 (at http://wecb.emerson.edu) and started getting calls from as far away as Spain and Japan. But the kids who run WECB aren't satisfied.

So this Saturday, the WECB team will hit the streets with an, um, unique promotional campaign. Dressed as nurses and doctors, WECB managers and DJs will patrol key areas in Boston -- Newbury Street, Harvard Square, etc. -- passing out program guides that have been designed to look like the hygiene guides used by doctors in the 1940s. "In the '40s, the guides were meant to help parents talk to their kids about sex," says Mike Lebovitz, WECB's general manager. "We'll be ranting and raving about radio hygiene and how to save your soul and cleanse your body by listening to WECB online."

Titled The Digest of Hygiene: Dee-Jay and Listener, the guide includes pictures of human reproductive organs and how they relate to radio. Assuming that the target audience understands the reference, and that some people born in the '40s will log on for the sake of nostalgia, the WECB crew predicts that their listenership could increase by up to 200 percent. Says Lebovitz: "We hope that this will create a massive wave of increased listenership. And that our server will crash."