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| WEQN Control Room, 1953, Jim Halleran at control board |
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| WEQN Studio, 1953. Chuck Reynolds, newscaster delivering the Lucky Strike News. |
American Tobacco Company's Lucky Strike cigarette business was a dependable sponsor for newscasts. Their ad agency sponsored news programming on student-run campus radio stations nationwide, and maintained a well-organized support program for affiliate stations. They provided scripts and publicity materials to affiliate stations.
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| WQRS Control Board 1953 |
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| KVSQ Control Room 1953 Terry Godwin at controls, Jim Evans standing. |
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| John Szucs and Chuck Reynolds WEQN Teletype Room, 1953 |
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| East Quad Council Room, Fall 1953 Foreground: lounge furniture for residents and conference table. WEQN Workroom in the distance beyond the piano, An old four-drawer dresser against back wall was used for WEQN equipment storage. |
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| WEQN Special Christmas Program, December 1953. Kathy Kneske, Gerry Jakowsky Bob Keysmith, Bibi Lamarque. |
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| WEQN. "Mister Tibbs" sitting atop wood equipment racks When the three stations KVSQ, WEQN, and WQRS, were first connected to form the Campus Broadcasting Network, station-to-station switching was done manually at each station. If no one was expected to be available to make the switch, the job was assigned to WHTBIS (whoever happens to be in studio). WTHBIS morphed into Mr. Tibbs. Tibbs-the-pumpkin met an untimely death after sitting atop a warm equipment rack for a few days. |
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| The new WEQN Control Board, handmade by Chief Engineer John F. Bennett during the summer of 1955. It was a masterful piece of work: an anodized aluminum panel in a beautifully finished wood cabinet. And it was totally impractical. There were no shelves or any other flat surfaces where DJs could stash records. The DJs hated it. Eventually other volunteer staff members installed it in a new cabinet with a flat top. |
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In 1955 WEQN moved into new studios, a part of a larger
project called "Operation Ransom". This project was partially funded by at the
East Quad Council through a loan from the University administration; hence the
name "Operation Ransom." During the reconstruction work, WEQN moved into temporary space, a small room once known as the "Pressing Room". Fortunately most of the construction work took place during the summer of 1955 so the station was forced to use pressing room only for a few weeks at the start of the fall semester.
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| East Quad north basement before Operation Ransom. Note the large conference room and the small space occupied by WEQN. |
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| East Quad north basement after Operation Ransom. The former WEQN space has been converted to two music-practce rooms. The old conference room now includes larger space for
WEQN, space for the newly-founded Benzinger Library, and
a larger maintenance shop for the building maintenance department. The East Quad
Council now meets in a much smaller space. |
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WEQN staff
reviewing (or pretending to review) the floor plans for the new studio. From left; Gene Moulton, Tom Engle, Bob
Keysmith, John Szucs. Neal McLain standing behind.
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| Dick Ballard in the temporary East Quad "studio" located in a large room (officially called a "pressing room") during Operation Ransom construction. |
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| John Szucs reading the news. Lucky Strike Newscast from the temporary WEQN studio in the Pressing Room. |
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| Neal McLain working on a carrier-current transmitter in the temporary studio (pressing room) at WEQN (by now called WCBN-EQ). After the three stations were interconnected we began to add transmitters in Women's Residences on "The Hill." This might have been one of those transmitters. |
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| WCBN-EQ in its new control room, Tuesday November 6, 1956. WCBN covered the Presidential Election in which Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won the election over the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson. |
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| WCBN-EQ Control room, Tuesday November 6, 1956. Bill Butler, (seated) with John Schick. |
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| Dave Amos in the WCBN-EQ office, examines two wireservice teleypes: AP and UPI. |
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| "My Phone": Don
Mullally and Bill Butler speaking to each other on separate phone lines. For the Presidential Election we installed a second phone line (313-662-5236) to
supplement the regular callin number (313-662-0557) so we could handle the
expected volume of calls. Exactly what
Don and Bill were doing in this photo is unknown but "goofing around"
comes to mind. During the election coverage Don and Bill each claimed
one of the phones as "My Phone". xxx Meanwhile changes were taking place over at West Quad |
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| WCBN-WQ, West Quad. Installing a new window between the studio and the control room. From left: Steve Fields, Dale Sawyer, Jack Squire, Paul Ritzmann |
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| WCBN-WQ. Al Clarke wiring relays. |
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WCBN-WQ. Paul
Ritzmann adjusting the transmitter.
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| WCBN-WQ. Paul Ritzmann and Al Clarke bugging the telephone line apparently for the purpose of using it as a connection from a remote site. The WCBN-WQ phone was an extension off the West Quad switchboard (313-662-4401), but at 10:30 PM each day when the switchboard closed WCBN-WQ was directly connected on an outside ("night line") line (313-662-4405) following a procedure normally reserved for House Mothers and other staff. Bugging any phone line (least of all a WQ nightline) would have been considered dangerous and illegal but of course that wouldn't stop a couple of engineering undergrads. |
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| WCBN-WQ Control Room Steve Fields at the Controls. Spring 1957 |
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| WCBN-WQ Studio. Steve Fields in Control Room Gary Willcock at the microphone. Spring 1957. |
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| WCBN-WQ Equipment Rack, Spring, 1957 |
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| WCBN-SQ South Quad, Control Room. John Clarke Mauer at the controls. |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad, Control Board, 1958 |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad, 1958. Control Room, Ted Hurchik at the controls. |
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| WCBN-SQ Equipment Rack, Spring 1956 |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad, Control Board, 1957 Tom Moch at the control board Viewed from studio. |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad, March 1957 Ed Brown, Tom Palmer |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad, Control Room, 1957 David Mills, Randy McLaughlin adjusting a new Rondine Turntable David Mills is now emeritus professor at the University of Delaware (Wikipedia) |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad 1957 Installing an FM Antenna on the Roof of South Quad John Maurer and "Slim" the maintenance guy. |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad 1957 Installing an FM Antenna on the Roof of South Quad Ken Burkhalter and Paul Ritzmann |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad 1958 Pulling wires through conduits in new wall Ken Burkhalter, Cliff Vanderyacht |
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| WCBN-SQ, South Quad 1958 Tim Meno installing acoustic tile on new wall |
