{"id":27,"date":"2013-12-14T19:01:44","date_gmt":"2013-12-14T19:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/?page_id=27"},"modified":"2023-08-22T18:14:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T18:14:59","slug":"wtbs-call-letters","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wtbs-call-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"WTBS Call Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.714285714; font-size: 1rem;\">In the fall of 1978, I was an undergraduate at MIT, spending most of my time at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonradio.org\/stations\/64683\">WTBS the MIT FM radio station<\/a> where I was the General Manager. The program director (Bob Connolly) and I received a call one day from someone claiming to be Ted Turner. He said he was interested in getting the call letters WTBS for his new &#8220;Superstation&#8221; WTCG in Atlanta. He offered to fly us down to ride his yacht (he was big in the America&#8217;s Cup back then) or to see a Braves game.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, after consultation with MIT big-wigs, station folks, lawyers, and the FCC, we decided to let him have the call letters in exchange for a $50,000 donation to the station. He gave us $25,000 on the date we released the letters, and $25,000 more when the FCC granted his application to obtain them. There was a chance that between the time we released them and he applied, someone else could have grabbed them&#8230;. hence the split payment.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, WTCG stood for Turner Communications Group&#8230;. doesn&#8217;t have quite the ring of Turner Broadcasting System, does it?<\/p>\n<p>The MIT radio station took the call letters <a href=\"http:\/\/wmbr.mit.edu\/\">WMBR<\/a> which stood for &#8220;MIT Based Radio&#8221;, &#8220;Walker Memorial Building Radio&#8221;, or &#8220;Monkey Business Radio&#8221; depending on who you asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the fall of 1978, I was an undergraduate at MIT, spending most of my time at WTBS the MIT FM radio station where I was the General Manager. The program director (Bob Connolly) and I received a call one day from someone claiming to be Ted Turner. He said he was interested in getting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-27","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P8oGwP-r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/27\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnfix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}