WUMB to Deep Six the Grateful Dead Hour

From David Gans, "The Grateful Dead Hour" producer' Facebook page:
"WUMB is planning to drop The Grateful Dead Hour after January 12. Please ask them to reconsider - and to move the show back to a more accessible time, too!"

The Grateful Dead, Kresge Plaza, MIT, Cambridge, MA May 6, 1970

The notice is accompanied by a letter from Jay Moburg, NPR affiliate WUMB's music and program director. From Cloudsurfing.gdhour.com

Hi David

I’m sorry to let you know that as of 1/12 we’re not going to be airing The Grateful Dead Hour. We need to streamline our programming for now.I’m sorry, if you have any questions feel free to shoot me an email.

Best,

Jay Moberg

WUMB Music and Program Director

David ends the cloudsurfing post with an appeal to Boston-area deadheads, "If you’d like the station to keep carrying the Grateful Dead Hour, please let them know ASAP! Send email to wumb@umb.edu"

The programming change has yet to appear on either the WUMB website nor on the "WUMB Radio Network" blog, which was last updated on May 30, 2012.

This decision to drop The Grateful Dead Hour certainly comes as no surprise. 
Reason 1. If memory serves, about 2-3 years ago the program was moved from midnight Friday to 4am Sunday, an hour only the heartiest of arts types are awake.
Reason 2. For the past 5 years or so, since WUMB drank the federal kool-aid by accepting Corporation for Public Broadcasting dollars and becoming a National Public Radio outlet (one of four in Boston, the others being WGBH, WBUR and WCRB), WUMB programming has become more and more mainstream pop AAA,. Judging by its Monday through Friday programming and its member concerts, the Grateful Dead Hour and WUMB are strange bedfellows. 

It will be interesteing to see how this plays out, what WUMB replaces the Greatful Dead Hour with. My money is on some NPR syndicated milquetoast program, such as World Cafe.
And if WUMB is cost cutting (due to its extensive network of transmitters and translators (covering from southern Maine and New Hampshire to the Quabbin Reservoir to the Cape and Islands) and high administrative salaries (according to state records, Interim Station Manager and Underwriting Patty Domeniconi will make $95,804.70 in 2013)?), what's next?

The Grateful Dead at MIT, 5/6/70

Description: Mary Ann Vecchio gestures and screams as she kneels by the body of a student, Jeffrey Miller, lying face down on the campus of Kent State University, in Kent, Ohio. On publication, the image was retouched to remove the fencepost above Vecchio's head.
Source: © 1970 Valley News-Dispatch
Date: 1970-05-04
Author: John Paul Filo, who was a journalism student at Kent State University at the time

40 years ago the Grateful Dead were booked to play a concert at MIT. Then tragedy struck at Kent State, four students protesting the US invasion of Cambodia were struck down by the soldiers of the Ohio National Guard. For more information read Wiki "Kent State Shootings".

Like most other colleges and universities across the country, the MIT students' response was to close down the school by a strike.

Because Kresgee was not available for the concert, and when the Dead saw hundreds of students milling about in the yard, they decided to "jam". A reel to reel tape recorder took the feed off the sound board, the impromptu concert was recorded.

Some years later, Eli Polonsky, now host of "60's/70's Lost and Found" on WMBR , Tuesdays noon-2pm discovered the tape in the WMBR vaults and contacted David Gans, host/producer of the Grateful Dead Hour. David subsequently restored, mastered and turned the recording into digital format.

The Grateful Dead at MIT, 5/6/70 will be broadcast tonight starting at 8pm PDT on the mother station, KPFA, Berkley. Check TGDH listings for other stations and times.

==============

The basic information was correct, Eli supplies the details.

The Dead were scheduled to play a paid concert the next night (5-7-70) in MIT's DuPont Gym, which they did, but they were in the area the day before, saw the massive student strike in front of the student center, and decided to spontaneously set up on Kresge Plaza in front of the student center and play a free concert for the rally crowd. MIT radio station WTBS (now WMBR) was set up with a direct mono high-fidelity feed to record the strike rally on reel-to-reel, and ended up with a soundboard tape of this impromptu (but legendary) Dead concert. The digitzed version (by David Gans) of that original reel is what will be played tonight on KPFA. http://www.kpfa.org at 11 PM EDT for us east coasters.

- Eli Polonsky