A Lively Ten-Year-Old

A BRASH, new directorate has got control of WDBS in the station's tenth anniversary year, and the king-size staff (130 plus) is going to new lengths to give the campus vigorous, lively radio.

Over the air, the student audience hears about "dynamic radio concepts," "bold, new programming," and "Dartmouth's fastest growing student activity." Upstairs in Robinson Hall, eager DBS operatives are spewing Madison Avenue trade talk such as this venerable campus never heard before.

Frank A. Sauter '57, of Riverside, Conn., is station manager and leader of these insurgent "communicators." He steps away from cutting a new "promo tape" and discourses like a Pat Weaver memo and all of Benton and Bowles ad agency, where he spent a mailroom summer.

"Radio," he says, "has changed, and continuity is now the thing." His automatic-fire conversation, in three sentences, encompasses "discarding the old con- cepts," "saturation campaign," "format," "dynamic," and "lively radio," a favorite.

Chief lieutenant and program director Richard M. Harris '58, of New Britain, Conn., reports that "the progressive element has taken over," and WDBS now has "the forward look."

"Frank is leading the bandwagon," Harris exclaims. "He's got a lot of good, new ideas, and he's exciting everyone with them. More people are thinking creatively. The results have been amazing: Why, people we didn't even know were thinking at all have been coming up to us with great ideas."

Sauter and Harris, along with chief announcer George Haines '58, are responsible for the new "log," DBS's unorthodox fall programming schedule. These three will tell the most about the "Monitor format," the why of "music, news, and sports," and, something especially dear to the heart of Sauter, "P. R."

Harris says the new log concept boils down to "giving the audience what it wants when it wants it." Or, in the Sauter phrase currently being aired, "Radio at the Dartmouth level, for Dartmouth students, by Dartmouth students."

The "new concept" (i.e., the Monitor format) shows up in three new shows, all long, loosely bound, and featuring "news in capsule form." "Tempo," six days a week in the morning, is five hours long. "Nightwatch," announced by Sauter, goes from midnight to 2 a.m., seven days a week. And Sauter's pet brainstorm, "Scope," is a 14-hour "radiothon" every Saturday, noon to sign-off.

"We want 'Scope' to be lively, current, on top of things," Sauter expounds. He cites the first show, "centering on" the New Hampshire game in the afternoon, "turning to" fraternities at night (rushing began the next day).

"Houseparties," Sauter goes on, "the campus went 'Househopping with Scope.' We picked up the Injunaires at one house, switched fast to a progressive group at another."

The other big, new direction at DBS is Sauter's cherished "P. R.," or public relations. "We want to make DBS a more

active, more influential organization on this campus," he says. "A lot of people have got the idea we're a bunch of dinks in sandals and berets up here, and we're going to use P. R. techniques to change that." One step he lists, besides the daily broadcasting barrage, is a "sophisticated, hard-sell ad" in Dart's first issue.

Harris, a little less effusive than Sauter, reflects that the P. R. approach is paying off. He points to the 84 freshmen who showed up for announcer auditions before classes even began. (DBS no longer calls for freshman "heelers" - a faintly derogatory term, Sauter feels - but offers a "training program.")

The exuberance around the station is no doubt partially a result of this September's application for expansion to a commercial 250-watt station. While it will be months before the FCC makes its decision, an atmosphere has been created, which, Sauter says, "makes everyone feel he's getting in on the ground floor of a big operation."

"At first," reports Harris, commenting on the Sauter jargon, "there was a lot of scoffing and parodying his crazy talk. The boys were saying 'Scrape' for 'Scope' and things like that. But that was probably natural. Everyone made fun of the '46 Studebaker ... which is the front end? ... remember? ... but the style caught on.

"To tell the truth," he continues, "when Frank first said 'Scope' to me, I laughed. And we all thought 'Tempo' was terrible. But now the names are accepted completely, and everyone uses them naturally."

DBS, besides "getting out of the studioto some central location" (104 McNutt)on election night, had a crew at Hart'sLocation, N. H., where, Sauter says, "allseventeen people in the town turned outat midnight to vote Republican and thenhad a big party."

The Dartmouth radio station, thereby,reported the first election returns in thenation.

Frank A. Sauter '57 (right), station manager, and Richard M. Harris '58, program director, provide the new leadership for WDBS.