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Written by: Sindhu Palaniappan
The Vanguard took a moment to sit down with President Mike Repsch and Music Director Nic Smits of Bentley’s WBTY radio station and found out a few interesting things.
What is WBTY?
The campus radio station, for those of you who don’t know, is 105.3 FM, even though you can’t really get it outside of the Student Center. Kidding aside, it’s usually the background music in the Student Center and it is streamed online, so it is accessible basically anywhere.
What kind of music do you play?
We play all types of music from classical to hip-hop to hard rock and metal. We do have talk shows and variety shows, as well. WBTY is looking to expand, so DJ hopefuls – WBTY extends an invite to you. The DJs are allowed to play anything at their own discretion, so there is vast variety on this station. If you’d like to request a song, feel free to hit up 781.891.3488 and speak to a DJ.
What was the big “collapse” of WBTY earlier this semester?
The collapse, which is a fairly dramatic way to put it, was pretty much a lot of equipment malfunctions, the antenna breaking, as well as the website going down and us losing the code so we couldn’t stream music over the Internet.
Along with this, we lost its domain name, which was pretty well known among labels and other companies that provide the station with promotional items and CDs.
WBTY was stuck with a new domain name which wasn’t well known among labels, and this led to those labels being unaware that WBTY still even existed.
With equipment breaking and the supply of free promotional items and CDs cut off, WBTY was put in a compromising financial situation. This led to a ton of arguments with the school due to inadequate funding to repair everything and a lot of effort to try and get everything back up and running again.
How are you working to “rebuild?”
We’re working on getting the equipment back up and running, along with contacting record companies in order to continue receiving CDs and promotional items again.
We are also tracking the music so people can see what we play and see what shows interest them. Another thing we’re doing is trying to promote the station so people know we’re back and really trying to make an impact and play a large role on campus.
Plans to collaborate with other groups, such as the Bentley Music Society, are coming in the future. WBTY is also looking into hosting a music festival of sorts to further expand the name they have here on campus.
To learn more or to simply tune into the station, visit radiobentley.com!
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