Eight decades into its presence on local airwaves, Harvard’s WHRB-FM is getting younger. Since October, the college station has made room for a group of Cambridge Rindge and Latin high school juniors making the show “Falcon Frequency.”
The show, airing usually around noon or 12:30 p.m. Sundays, is done on station equipment that the Falcon team was trained on by its college staff, students said. With the help of a teacher, they do the production and record in the studio on their own.
“We drafted an email to WHRB, just reaching out asking if we could somehow contribute to any of their existing programs or one of our own,” said Sarah Glassman, a student at Cambridge Rindge and Latin who began thinking in the summer of 2024 about a way to promote teen voices. “We thought it was a really long shot, but they ended up getting back to us later that week, saying that they would love to talk to us.”
Glassman and classmates and friends Ella Colgan, Xavier Agran, Elijah Bartholomew and Noah Fritz-Sherman were inspired to start a show of their own because they grew up listening to talk radio with their families.
“All of us were talking about how public radio, like NPR, has impacted us,” Glassman said.
The nonprofit Harvard radio station, now more than 80 years old, streams online but can still be found at 95.3 on the terrestrial FM dial. While the station advertises that it specializes in classical music, jazz, underground rock and a “repertoire of music left largely untouched by other commercial stations,” it also has news and sports shows. “Falcon Frequency” runs from 45 minutes to an hour, covering topics from high school entrepreneurs and local bands to local history.
Staff has “no idea who listens” because the station has no way of tracking the metrics, Glassman said. The students spread the word through an Instagram account and through family and friends, and has had some indication of success: “A girl at school came up and told me she listened to all of our episodes,” Glassman said.
The show expands the students’ education beyond the standard school curriculum and connects them with the community and history of Cambridge, the student producers said.
In one episode, “we talked a lot about the history of Central Square, how it’s become what it is today, how it’s changed over the years,” Agran said. “That’s definitely something I wouldn’t have learned in any of the classes I’ve taken at school, and it was cool to talk to people who’ve lived there for their entire lives.”
While staff isn’t growing for the radio segment itself, the students are starting a club at the high school to teach other students how to do radio. They are mulling whether to pass the show on – which might depend on “if we find people who are passionate about radio and continuing the segment,” Glassman said.
This year, producers hope to refine the show’s structure and the season’s programming to emphasize the importance of a youth perspective in media. Music is expected to be a part of that.
“When I turn on my local radio I don’t usually come across a station that plays music that I listen to or that I’m interested in getting into,” Glassman said.
A stronger
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