DuMont will make TV work: A TL

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nick_crenshaw82

nick_crenshaw82

AnonymousSauce said:
Chapter 7

As was alluded to earlier in the 1950s, RKO General had purchased the comic book imprint Charlton Comics to ensure that the comic book version of its at the time ever-popular kids’ superhero program Captain Video would always have an outlet to be printed in. The first imprint to license the program, Fawcett Comics, had pulled out of the comics industry after the disastrous fallout of the settlement of the National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications case that saw the publisher pay a settlement and cease publication of its most-popular title Captain Marvel for allegedly having infringed on the copyright of Superman.

Charlton, with the newfound corporate resources backing it up, would begin to hit a stride as the comics industry entered the Silver Age in the early 1960s. Shortly after DC Comics successfully revived the superhero comic niche, Charlton introduced what would go on to be their flagship hero in Captain Atom. Captain Atom, whose character name was Allen Adam, was a technician in a special experimental rocket when it accidentally launched with him trapped inside. Adam was atomized when the rocket exploded while entering the upper atmosphere. However, he somehow gained superpowers that included the ability to reform his body safely on the ground. He would be joined by the Blue Beetle, a character that was a revival of a previous comic imprint’s character who was originally comic relief but went on to be very similar to Marvel’s Iron Man, the Question, who was designed by famous artist Steve Ditko, and Son of Vulcan, a similar character to Marvel’s Thor, to go along with Video.

This lineup of characters, along with the other assorted horror, romantic and other types of comics that every comic imprint engaged in at the time, were relatively successful, though not enough to move Charlton beyond third place in the American comic industry at any point in the Silver or Bronze Ages. It hardly mattered, however, with the corporate backing of RKO General ensuring that they would always have the resources to be competitive, a lot more than could be said for smaller, independent imprints like Fox, Dell, Gold Key and others that began to be winnowed out of the market in the late 50s and throughout the 60s and 70s.

During the Bronze Age of Comics in the 1970s, Charlton grouped several of its heroes such as Atom, Blue Beetle, Question, and Captain Atom ancillary character and sometime love interest Nightshade, into a team, the Sentinels of Justice, later shortened to the Sentinels to avoid any unnecessary resemblance to DC’s Justice League of America. In actuality, the team much more resembled Marvel’s Avengers, a fact that would prove key in events in the late 1970s. Also, in the mid-70s, Charlton convinced budding horror novelist and sometime comic enthusiast Stephen King to come on board as a writer and bring his Dark Tower character the Gunslinger to the medium with his own title. Charlton kept him and Video, as space or interdimensionally based characters, however, out of the Sentinels or any other team ups and had them and any other space based characters interact mostly with each other and only occasionally with the earthbound characters.

In the late 1970s, an event happened that had major ramifications in the comic book industry and led to the further winnowing of the smaller players in the industry as well as changes within what was now widely regarded as the big 3 players. DC planned a large ramp-up of its output for 1978 which it dubbed the “DC Explosion.” Since the early 1970s, DC had seen its dominance of the market overtaken by Marvel Comics, partly because Marvel had significantly increased the number of titles that it published (both original material and reprint books). In large part, the DC Explosion was a plan to overtake Marvel by using its own strategy. DC's expansion actually began in earnest in 1975, when the company debuted 12 titles in the spring and summer, followed by four more titles by the end of the year. DC added 14 titles in 1976 and four more in 1977. All of this, however, ended up backfiring on DC as it suffered poor sales from the winter of 1977 all the way through 1978. In addition, the flooding of the market caused sales to drop industrywide, as the effects of the late 70s economic stagnation and harsh blizzards in the winter of 1977-78 combined to tamp down demand for comics at the same time that printing and paper costs increased.

As a result, DC and Marvel retrenched and cancelled titles while many of the smaller companies simply went belly-up and exited the market. Charlton, however, or really the RKO paymasters, saw opportunity. RKO executives ordered Charlton to increase output of Sentinels material along with the space-based characters, in the face of declining profitability and even losses. The aim of Charlton’s mini-explosion wasn’t short-term profitability, it was to rid the market of a competitor in its niche, namely Marvel’s Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy titles. The gambit worked, as Marvel would go on to cancel most of the titles related to these franchises by 1980 and began to concentrate on their most successful titles in Spider-Man and the X-Men along with lesser known properties and licensed material that it had the rights to at the time. While the Avengers and Guardians titles along with the individual heroes therein would be brought back in time, they never again would be emphasized characters in the Marvel pantheon while the Sentinels would have their popularity reinforced in the late Bronze Age and beyond with cartoons and live action shows on the DuMont Network as well as their ongoing comic titles and tie in merchandizing.
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I think this idea could still work in a TL where Facwett still survives.
 
Gian

Gian

Banned
BTW @AnonymousSauce, I think even though @Dan1988 is not here trying to release the full Part III, I think we have enough material to suggest how public television/southern New England might develop for the next update.
 
nick_crenshaw82

nick_crenshaw82

AnonymousSauce said:
In that TL they've already gone down the road of having Paramount's '70s attempt at a TV network survive and become the fourth network.
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I was mainly focusing on the whole Captain Video/Fawcett/Charlton thing and how in @THeaven's timeline Charlton had no corporate backers (as far as I know). In your TL DuMont pulls Captain Video from Fawcett because of their court case against National but nothing else. In @THeaven's timeline Fawcett win there case just like OTL but with no appeal from National. That last aspect can work with @neamathla's TL.
 

Nivek

nick_crenshaw82 said:
I was mainly focusing on the whole Captain Video/Fawcett/Charlton thing and how in @THeaven's timeline Charlton had no corporate backers (as far as I know). In your TL DuMont pulls Captain Video from Fawcett because of their court case against National but nothing else. In @THeaven's timeline Fawcett win there case just like OTL but with no appeal from National. That last aspect can work with @neamathla's TL.
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I don't care fawcett comics, i thought this tl finally was revived...but sadly not yet
 
nick_crenshaw82

nick_crenshaw82

AnonymousSauce said:
It's been rough for me with COVID shutting down the libraries and my college, meaning no desktop access, but I'm still considered an essential worker so I'm still putting in my 40+ hours a week at work. I'll try to work on something this weekend but no promises as to when I'll have the next update out.
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Fair enough, I sympathize with you, most of my work is done at the library too. I'm surprised that your school hasn't offered laptops or Macbooks for teleschooling.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

AnonymousSauce said:
It's been rough for me with COVID shutting down the libraries and my college, meaning no desktop access, but I'm still considered an essential worker so I'm still putting in my 40+ hours a week at work. I'll try to work on something this weekend but no promises as to when I'll have the next update out.
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I can definitely sympathize, except in my case I'm a non-essential worker so I'm left largely focusing on my classes (most of which were already online to begin with, though not out of any sense of premonition but mainly as a mitigation measure for the typically rough New England winter) and a TL project I've been working on with some degree of enthusiasm. (Thank goodness my public library and associated statewide network does automatic renewal of materials from member libraries.) At least you have some of my musings on channel assignments in Southern New England and my proposal for a more tiered approach to public television, moving it out of what we are familiar with IOTL and towards something a little more in tune with "the times" from last year, so that could be used as a start.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

Dan1988 said:
I'll get around to it; don't worry. ;) I'm just swamped with stuff.
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So, I know some of you are probably waiting for the second half of the educational/public television update, and while I do not have my notes with me on that, doing some refresh of the whole thing has done me some good on this aspect. So, it’ll probably look a little different from what I anticipated, but it is what it is – especially these days.

First off, a quick recap:
* Original comment on channel spacing: <https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...make-tv-work-a-tl.438547/page-3#post-18713314>
Therefore, for non-commercial broadcasting in New England (at least moving it out of its narrow confines as “educational television”) and to mollify objections over consolidation, a regional system of non-commercial television was conceived to take over some of the local functions which commercial television stations normally do, with the Boston stations operating UHF repeater networks throughout the DMA, with two exceptions (WNHC-TV in New Haven, CT and WJAR-TV in Providence, RI). This is a general exception due to unique factors pertaining to Southern New England, which will not be repeated elsewhere in the US.
*Another channel spacing comment (or two): <https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...make-tv-work-a-tl.438547/page-3#post-18811902>
*Original conception of the three updates: <https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...make-tv-work-a-tl.438547/page-4#post-18843943>
Basically, one of the key players of non-commercial television, as IOTL, will be WGBH-TV, since it was responsible for helping grow non-commercial television in New England, and through the Eastern Educational Network (EEN), proving that a public television network was viable – this would prove useful in my conception of PBS ITTL, as with non-commercial broadcasting throughout the whole of New England, with added responsibilities in MA, CT, RI, and southern VT and NH
*My overall conception of channel spacing in Southern New England (or, as @Gian would put it, Part I): <https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...make-tv-work-a-tl.438547/page-5#post-18848006>
Now, I don’t want to make any comment on what the final channel layout will be (that’s for @AnonymousSauce to decide), but I did provide some general parameters for how it would work. (Further down, I also note WHDH’s OTL issues, should the OP choose to use that; the Wiki article <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHDH-TV_(1957–1972)> goes into quite a bit of general detail on how it played out IOTL.)
*Finally, educational update, Part 1 (or Part II): <https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...make-tv-work-a-tl.438547/page-5#post-18854387>
The origins of WGBH through the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council (LICBC), the defeat of the original broadcasting reform movement in the US (pre-POD), the formation of the EEN and the first regional interconnection (what we would now call a network), and the core part of my conception of non-commercial broadcasting in (Southern) New England and, by extension, elsewhere in the US using an approach more like then-West Germany’s ARD or the Netherlands’ public broadcasting system as a natural outgrowth of the EEN which would lead to my conception of PBS ITTL, including an earlier deployment than OTL of WGBH’s plan to create regional public TV in Massachusetts outside of Greater Boston, thus leading to a three-tiered approach of national system, regional/state networks, and local stations.
*And finally, a placeholder which covers some of the impact of the fire as well as the possibility of complementary public TV stations: <https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...make-tv-work-a-tl.438547/page-6#post-18912261>
That was quite a topic to cover in such detail, but I hope it helped to shed some light on what, for me, is a very touchy subject (vis-à-vis public broadcasting), as well as providing some contours for New England’s regional situation.

So, without further ado:
(yes, I know, it does not follow the canonical channel assignments for Boston; please bear with me!)

Before that OTL sign-off (which is a recreation) was emitted from the transmitter in Needham, MA, by arrangement with WBZ radio and TV, WGBH radio and TV was located at the following place:
<https://www.wgbhalumni.org/2010/12/23/foundations/ >
Which, IOTL, ultimately went up in smoke in 1961. These WGBH alumni can explain the fire better than I will ever do, so here it is:
<https://www.wgbhalumni.org/2007/01/01/1961-fire/>
<https://www.wgbhalumni.org/2016/09/05/october-14-1961-that-fateful-day/ >
To repeat myself from the placeholder:
What needs to be mentioned here is that the fire was THE headline news in the Boston area for months on end. Despite having everything the station built up gone up in smoke, it was still determined to get back on air. Because it was before public broadcasting became in its thing with educational broadcasting on a shoestring budget, every scrap of cash was essential in rebuilding the station. The fundraising drives were a massive sensation in the press and elsewhere, and commercial TV did its bit until WGBH got temporary studios up and running for a bit until new permanent studios were completed, including even in the Museum of Science. Here, too, if WGBH cannot considate into temporary studios ITTL and thus remain encamped in various areas throughout Boston, the local commercial TV stations, along with the existing LICBC members, would feel like they are helping out as stakeholders. TTL's WNAC, for example - the DuMont affiliate - was one station IOTL which played host to some WGBH programming. DuMont could contribute much more ITTL if it wanted too, including new equipment - even if surplus - since like the other stations in Boston WGBH would be seen not as a competitor but as a complement. Much like what we are seeing now with Notre Dame's restoration, it's possible each of the stations try to outdo each other in big-money donations to WGBH as a prestige project (for the Boston market is still small enough that everyone involved with the industry still know each other). That is due to the strength of the impact WGBH had in Eastern New England even within the span of a couple of years. WGBH in TTL would be more reliant on its flegdling network of stations, which could change the direction of the station's future - which once I can use a physical keyboard I can elaborate in detail. It also will depend on if the FCC can yank WHDH off the air due to problems with the Boston Herald and where the noncommercial channels are placed. All would be essential in redefining educational broadcasting ITTL.
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Indeed, the Boston commercial TV stations were more than cooperative in lending out space so that WGBH could continue making programs, even WIHS (as long as it was able to use the space it lent to WGBH for its Sunday TV Mass). If the fire still happened ITTL, then that type of cooperation would continue, and for more ways than one. At the time, up until the 1980s or so, television was seen to have some sort of public-service value in addition, in a North American context, to having a sense of place in the community a broadcaster served. As the central focus of this TL, the DuMont Network would have a role to play in helping the station get back on air, much like what the Ford Foundation and many countless of other New Englanders did (to the point of having penny drives in the schools and other small-scale fundraising efforts), but the commercial stations also stepped up in many ways (including even doing promotions for the building of WGBH’s then-new studios on 125 Western Ave., now part of Harvard University and since relocated to 1 Guest Street in the Allston-Brighton neighborhood). Meanwhile, while WGBH is trying to find its feet, once a sizeable network got formed ITTL, this time around they could help ensure that the network would still have enough programming to fill the schedule, including NET output, even if it was different from what would normally come on from WGBH. To use a modern anachronism, aiding the LICBC would give other Boston-area TV stations the corporate social responsibility it would have to ensure good PR for themselves and continued collaboration with a station and a network that emits programming the other stations usually do not carry because they are not profitable. For WGBH in its modern form to continue ITTL, the fire is a necessary thing – it’s as part of New England regional history as the 1938 hurricane was.

However, of course, there are ways of ensuring the fire does not happen ITTL because of the butterfly effect; an obvious one would be either moving into a different pre-existing facility altogether, or it gets land donated early on from which to build new studios (e.g. an earlier 125 Western Avenue). In the latter case, WGBH-TV would still be reliant on the other TV stations and LICBC member institutions for studio space and program production before the permanent studios are built (as well as providing an outlet for the Boston-area TV stations to demonstrate their local commitment by placing programs on WGBH which would not fit on their own schedules – even including such regional stuff as coverage of candlepin bowling <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlepin_bowling> – which, while not educational, does provide a sense of community/cultural identity), while WGBH-FM can either temporarily continue on as before in cramped space in the basement of Symphony Hall (for which I provide yet another alum recollection of the early days, viz. <https://www.wgbhalumni.org/2000/01/01/run-a-railroad/>), and/or use the 84 Mass Ave. space as temporary radio studios before the new facility is built. These other ways ensure a more decentralized operation at WGBH-TV early on and with cooperation from other LICBC member institutions which may also have signed on television operations before WGBH ultimately does so. This decentralized operation brings the LICBC Television Network, and ultimately the EEN and TTL’s PBS, closer to the ARD and/or Dutch model as it allows anyone to collaborate in terms of studio space, production facilities, etc.

Likewise, any hope of getting a coveted VHF frequency (even when starting out on UHF, and in which case coverage would be limited to the immediate vicinity and an early use of cable TV to link up schools for educational programming) depends on the resolution of the long-running dispute between the Boston Herald and the FCC over WHDH-TV. The resolution would have implications over whether another channel has opened up and/or how ABC network service would be maintained and/or if public television in Boston is doomed to remain UHF-only. Ultimately, it’s the decision of the OP to do with as the OP pleases, but ultimately WHDH-TV is going to snap sooner or later (preferably sooner rather than later, in my opinion). My own preferences, based on the canonical channel numbers, would be the following:
A. Boston
*WRTB, ch2 (CBS; Raytheon Broadcasting) > continues on for TL purposes
*WBZ-TV, ch4 (NBC; Westinghouse Broadcasting Corporation) > continues on for TL purposes
*WGBH-TV, ch5 (WGBH Educational Foundation; LICBC/EEN/NET > PBS) > ultimately the dispute between the FCC and the Boston Herald snaps sooner rather than later; if the fire still happens around the same time as the FCC decides enough is enough, then in a desperate act of goodwill the Herald donates everything to the LICBC (and I mean everything – the Herald not only owned WHDH-TV and its Morrisey Boulevard studios, but it also owned an AM station and a commercial FM station – at the time the FM station was a simulcast of the AM station – and to go that far will probably need special authorization from the FCC); WGBH’s old UHF station (if we assume that’s how it starts) thus either gets repurposed as an earlier form of WGBX-TV <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGBX-TV> or gets repurposed as a public television station for Central New England
*WNAC-TV, ch7 (DuMont; Yankee Network > RKO General)
B. Elsewhere in Eastern New England
*Band II: ch6 remains in its Channel 1 capacity for New Bedford and the MA South Coast, but in addition is also designated as a non-commercial frequency (kudos for @Gian for the suggested call sign “WGBC”) which can use a repeater network to cover Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket
*Band III: Southern NH maintains both OTL stations WMUR (ch9) and WENH (ch11), with WMUR starting off as an independent TV station – and in those days, up until very recently, independent TV stations in New England tend to carry not only standard fare typical of such stations but also “pre-empted” network programming from the Boston stations; after WHDH’s license gets revoked by the FCC, WMUR fills in the gap and becomes the ABC affiliate for the Southern New England DMA – which provides a lot of much needed improvement for the station (after the original owner’s retirement IOTL, WMUR went into hard times, including having cameras roll on their own without human intervention because the floors were in such bad shape, and it was one of the last stations in the OTL Boston/Manchester DMA to convert to color TV) because here, a consortium containing, among others, the publisher of the Manchester Union-Leader and the owner of WGIR (the former WMUR-AM) will purchase it ITTL with the blessing of ABC; in RI, WJAR does its own thing although primarily an affiliate of WBZ-TV (and, through it, NBC) first and foremost, but to open up a non-commercial frequency and resolve WJAR’s interference issues, it moves up to ch12 while a new station owned by LICBC member Brown University signs on for the first time on ch10, WBRU-TV
C. Western New England
*Band I: ch3 as a general frequency for Western New England, taking advantage of its OTL powerful transmitter which covered a good portion of CT and Western MA and secondary coverage to parts of VT and NH; would much prefer non-commercial, though WNHC with its CT-focused coverage area could be fine here, too
*Band III: If WNHC does not move to ch8 as per OTL, then ch8 instead could serve as a ch3 substitute with its powerful transmitter blanketing Western New England (regional public television stations in this region will be UHF only, including WGBH’s two stations, one successful (WGBY-TV/ch57, Springfield) and one planned but never launched (WGBW-TV/ch35, North Adams – which in this case I’d use the WGBA callsign for the North Adams station and use WGBW for the Western New England VHF station, while CT’s stations would use the “WYBC” callsign due to Yale University for the main station and either OTL callsigns or variations thereof for the regional stations)
But that’s that; primarily just my opinion. It’s still the OP’s decision.

Now, I know it’s quite a divergence from the focus on WGBH, but that’s part of the point. Much of how non-commercial television fares is dependent on the availability of non-commercial frequencies (or frequencies which can be cobbled together to form a non-commercial public television network even if they were assigned commercial). Since each of the six states where the LICBC Television Network operates, plus PBS (< EEN), is part of at least one interstate DMA, non-commercial television – in its decentralized manner as I envision it – serve as a way of bridging the different regions together. However, to get the network organized along German lines, at least, requires a two-level form of channel organization. One channel would be New England-wide – in addition to NET/PBS and EEN output, each of the member organizations or regional stations is responsible for a percentage of airtime, with some programming jointly produced across the whole network (the news, for example, is one example, as is special events coverage), even though in reality adequate terrestrial coverage would require UHF repeaters in much of Northern New England, or additional frequencies regardless of band in the particular case of Maine. Thus, CT, ME, NH, and VT each provide some contribution alongside MA regional stations and LICBC members, and some of that output will eventually find national distribution. The other channel would form what the Germans call “Die Dritten” (the Third Programmes) which are local/regional in orientation (and in which case Boston gains another UHF station). Both would find space within the tiered approach I showcased earlier; the Western New England VHF channel can also show some specific news and public affairs programming to that area alongside the existing LICBC Network output, of which some could even make it to the general schedule within New England as a counter-balance to the Boston-centricness. While the regional non-commercial stations broadcast news and public affairs programming for their region, the additional Boston UHF station focuses on areas not covered by the news or covers them more in depth, similar to the BBC’s Newsnight program, and on minority communities which have been historically under-represented in news coverage (so more programs like Say Brother/Basic Black and La Plaza).

For now, because of time constraints on my end, this will have to do, thanks in part to the fact I still have a lot of schoolwork to do. If I get the time to come up with more (or if I do find my old notes!), I definitely will not hesitate to post here. If I had more time, I’d like to especially discuss making PBS less marginal than OTL, which I think much of what I have written do come a long way towards that goal. The problems, as always, are funding and ensuring there is a broad range of programming on PBS. Retreating into a familiar cocoon and importing BBC programming, as great as they are (especially the latter), does not work as a good substitute for PBS’s component parts attempting the same (even if it’s something as ambitious as Tatort and Polizeiruf 110 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizeiruf_110>), and that’s where I think the tiered approach could help here. Apologies if this feels like a downer/disappointment after much expectation.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

BTW, I just realized something that would be very much off-topic and out of focus from public television, but even public radio in New England could have some changes as a result of this. You know how we had mentioned earlier about how WGBH had the potential to go radio-only? Well, apart from everything else going on in television, that might get a big boost if the Boston Herald gets involved with donating everything to WGBH, and I mean everything - lock, stock and barrel. (Of course, pending FCC approval at the time and all that.) That AM station and commercial FM station I mentioned a couple of days ago may prove useful in this.

But first, let's have a look at public radio in Metro Boston, and for that we primarily mean WGBH-FM, but also starting in the 1970s that included WBUR as well. From the official station history of the latter station:
WBUR-FM went on the air at 4 p.m. on March 1, 1950, as a 400-watt non-commercial educational station licensed to Boston University. In its early years, the WBUR staff comprised amateurs, professionals, volunteers and students.

Through the 1960s, more and more radio professionals joined WBUR and gradually transformed the station’s format. By 1971, WBUR had enough full-time employees to qualify for status as a public radio station and applied to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for certification.

In 1980, the station began to receive programming from NPR via satellite. By 1982, WBUR had established its identity as a news station, with NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered broadcast each weekday and local news programming produced by a staff of young reporters.
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Source: <https://www.wbur.org/inside/highlights-history>
See also: <https://www.bostonradio.org/stations/68241>

Meanwhile, WGBH-FM was going in its own direction:
With its debut on October 6, 1951, WGBH became one of the first noncommercial stations in America to operate without direct ties to an educational institution. While wags joked that the calls stood for “God Bless Harvard”, and the station was supported in part by donations from Harvard (including the transmitter site on Great Blue Hill in Milton), it was operated by the “WGBH Educational Foundation”, which eventually would include representation from most of the educational institutions in the Boston area.

The foundation was an outgrowth of the Lowell Institute, whose history even then dated back more than a century. The Institute's Cooperative Broadcasting Council began offering educational programming over Boston's commercial AM stations in the thirties before seeking a station of its own.

With funding provided by the Institute, a transmitter donated by Edwin Howard Armstrong himself, and studio space in Boston's Symphony Hall, WGBH was off to a strong start, helped by the popularity of its live Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts, a tradition that continues today.

Under the leadership of Ralph Lowell and Hartford Gunn, WGBH offered a wide variety of educational programming, ranging from speeches and panel discussions to classical music to jazz and folk. WGBH was the key station of the Eastern Educational Network, an early interconnection of the first few educational radio stations in the region.

With the establishment of WGBH-TV in 1955, much of the explicitly “educational” function of WGBH radio was shifted to the TV side, with the radio station becoming increasingly focused on music programming.

After the fire that destroyed the WGBH studios at 84 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge in the sixties, the WGBH stations moved across the Charles River to a new home on Western Avenue in Allston. (The old location, on the MIT campus, would later become the home of MIT's Stratton Student Center.) WGBH radio became an early member of National Public Radio and a regular contributor of programming to the NPR system.

WGBH's best-known program through the seventies, eighties, and most of the nineties was Robert J. Lurtsema's “Morning pro musica”, heard at its height on a network that extended from Maine to Albany. The station's nightly jazz and blues programming also found a receptive audience, thanks in part to the station's 100-kW signal that reaches from Rhode Island to New Hampshire.
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Source: <https://www.bostonradio.org/stations/70510>

So, WGBH-FM was a full-service public radio station, while WBUR was a college radio station that was becoming more like a regular public radio station (not that staff and audiences at WBUR were happy about those changes, though, hence WTBU's existence.) There's potential for both WGBH-FM and WBUR to become under the same roof (as Boston University was an LICBC member), though what for is an open question that will need some research, considering how both stations competed for the same audience during the early NPR period IOTL, with both programming music shows and overlapping somewhat in terms of spoken-word programming (on top of that, the non-commercial/educational section of the FM dial is already pretty crowded as is in the Northeast in general and New England in particular). How that will work out, of course, relies on what happens to the Boston Herald's radio stations, which themselves have a storied history.
*WHDH-AM: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEEI_(AM)#WHDH_(850_AM)>, <https://www.bostonradio.org/stations/1912>
*WHDH-FM: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WJMN_(FM)#WHDH-FM_(1948–1972)>, <https://www.bostonradio.org/stations/53972>
It looks like WHDH-AM was a highly profitable station typical of the period, while WHDH-FM was trying to find its feet. Much like with television, there's a potential for networking New England's public radio stations together (in fact, here's the official history of the EEN's successor on the radio front, and one of the first extensions of WGBH's signal outside Boston was WFCR in Springfield, MA, in the early 1960s). Unlike television, the radio network will probably remain somewhat limited and primarily concentrated in Massachusetts. Although individual stations themselves will have audiences far beyond Massachusetts (the Boston radio stations, for example, have an easy time capturing an audience in most of Rhode Island), for now - for historic reasons Massachusetts will be the center, since until the 1970s it was the only state with any public radio presence (one of the first New England states outside MA that introduced public radio was Maine, in 1970, congruent with WBUR's eventual changeover). Even if the PBS brand is extended to radio, more likely than not the OTL NPR model would be retained, though organizations like Pacifica and EERN would still be around, if not for regional coordination then at least to provide alternative sources of programming outside of locally-generated stuff and relaying NPR material (and in this case, I'd see the EERN's radio arm essentially being to TTL what PRI is in OTL, as a secondary source among its members).

So, how to translate that into something that could work in the LICBC's favor? The LICBC Network now has 2 more stations (plus 1 more when WBUR becomes professionalized enough to come under the LICBC's umbrella). In terms of expansion, it has a captive audience, though with three radio stations concentrated in Boston (WGBH-FM, WHDH-AM, WHDH-FM) it has a crowded presence - not to mention a troublesome one by inheriting commercial stations from the Boston Herald donation. Let's delay the WFCR sign-on for a bit until after the 1961 fire (if we assume it happens; if not, it signs on as per OTL) so that the LICBC can figure out what to do with the stations it just inherited. WGBH-FM continues as is, for now, and will be the main station driving the expansion of the LICBC Network westward (with the creation of WFCR in Springfield, where 4 of the 5 members of the local college consortium there become LICBC members, as will be the case of the members of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium once we get an earlier launch of WICN); the core schedule will be LICBC (< WGBH-FM)/EERN, but the two regional stations are able to broadcast their own programming pertaining to their broadcast area, and thus a public radio network is formed. WHDH-AM and WHDH-FM, by contrast, drop commercials (outside of sports broadcasts, for which WGBH-FM has no choice because their are supplied by outside providers) and diverge. Fortunately, changes of taste in music mean that WHDH-FM is the first to experience changes; looking for fresh models for operating a public radio station, WBFO in Western New York (its head at the time, IOTL, would go on to steer NPR during the first decades of its existence) and KPFA (primarily the "old" KPFA that Pacifica Radio supporters prefer not to talk about, even though there was exciting stuff going on then) become guiding models for a new radio station aimed at a newer, younger, more diverse audience than WGBH-FM, focusing its music on jazz, folk, blues, progressive rock, urban music, some types of world music which might be interesting but seldom heard (possible candidates include salsa, tango, bossa nova, choro, and Indian classical music), and local/independent artists, combined with an innovative approach to news, public affairs, and culture that would be relevant to young people. This new WHDH-FM would find its first affiliate outside of Boston in an interesting spot. Eager to do its bit for the LICBC Network, Yale University quickly comes on board with their own radio operations, using it as an additional frequency for their own college radio station, so WYBC-FM combines its college radio output with EERN and WHDH-FM programming; WYBC also adds a satellite station of WFCR (< WGBH-FM). WHDH-AM continues, more or less, throughout the 1960s as it did under private ownership, minus commercials and with the addition of public radio output as overflow from WGBH-FM.

The 1970s see the expansion of the public radio elsewhere in New England (primarily in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connecticut) as well as changes resulting from the inclusion of WBUR in the LICBC and, parallel to changes going on with the CBC (see also this paper reëxamining the Radio Revolution, providing some context to the whole thing), massive changes at WHDH-AM take place. The existing full-service/MOR format gets dumped and replaced with a news, talk, and information format (characteristic of newer public radio stations in the US IOTL, as well as echoes of the later OTL WPR's Ideas Network and BBC's Radio Five Live), drawing its lessons from WHDH-FM's news and public affairs content as well as taking advantage of the then-contemporary New Journalism movement, creating a distinct sound for public radio news. While the changes to WHDH-AM were controversial at the beginning, Bostonians became accustomed to this new style of public radio. WGBH-FM and WHDH-FM continue on as before, though the addition of WBUR provided some challenges. For this brief period, WBUR essentially became a companion station to both WGBH-FM and WHDH-FM, airing programming that were in similar genres as the latter two stations (especially WGBH-FM) but with a greater sense of depth and some degree of counter-programming. Alongside this is the extension of the LICBC Network and EERN (plus *NPR) into new stations, primarily signed on by state universities (UMaine and UNH; in New Hampshire's case, this is much earlier than OTL, when it signed on in the early 1980s, and is now seen as an extension of its public TV station), community groups (Vermont and Connecticut), and alliances with other universities (Connecticut via Yale University allying with other state colleges and UConn, bringing them into the LICBC fold). These tend to combine their own programming with LICBC (including *NPR and EERN) output, making them less like simulcasts of WGBH-FM as local stations (so WYBC's satellite station of WFCR becomes the flagship of a CT network). An additional Massachusetts radio station soon signs on from Newburyport, MA, serving the North Shore and southern Merrimack Valley, in the mold of WICN and WFCR (IOTL this station signed on in the early period of the Noughties and is a relay of WUMB, which does not exist ITTL and will be reflected elsewhere).

Finally, during the 1980s and 1990s, the LICBC rebrands the 4 Boston radio stations as New England Public Radio, the latter bit also used for the radio side of the LICBC Network. As a result, the 4 stations undergo some restructuring, while the regional stations now assert their own identity as well as selective expansion of some of the 4 Boston radio stations, justifying the name change of the 4 Boston stations as "networks". WHDH-AM continues as a news, public affairs, and talk station, now called the "News and Ideas Network", and is probably the only station which does not exhibit much change from its profile/format - indeed, the network is used to expand public radio service to the last remaining areas without public radio in New England, Rhode Island and Cape Cod/the Islands. WGBH-FM, by contrast, changed its format to be more music-oriented, although within a traditional public radio format, thus renaming the flagship LICBC radio station itself the "Arts and Culture Network". Flagship *NPR programs with local news updates were limited to drive-time and certain times of the weekend schedule, allowing WGBH-FM to devote itself to classical music during weekdays and weekend mornings, jazz music during weeknights, and folk, Celtic, blues, and variety during Saturday afternoons and evenings, and spoken-word/cultural programming on early Sunday mornings and Sunday afternoons. WBUR and WHDH-FM, in turn, undergo massive changes to bring them up to date and to differentiate WBUR, in particular. WHDH-FM settles into an adult album alternative format, with emphasis on local Boston and regional New England artists, which incorporates jazz, folk, blues, Celtic (all four to a much greater degree than on WGBH-FM), singer-songwriter pop, Afropop, soul, bluegrass, and world music, renaming itself "Coffee House Radio" in the process - though retaining a considerable part of its former progressive rock format and its news, public affairs, and cultural programming for young people and minority communities, although much reduced than before and combined with newer alternative rock. (For an OTL comparison, minus the rock music, much of this is similar to the OTL WICN and WUMB-FM.) Finally, WBUR, by contrast, adopted an innovative hybrid format that called itself the "Arts and Ideas Network" that takes the best of each of the other three stations and combines them in a manner similar to a "hybrid highbrow" format and a balance between spoken-word and music content. In terms of music content, WBUR thus retains classical music and jazz (overlapping WGBH-FM on both and WHDH-FM on the latter), but takes a broader look inherited from WHDH-FM (when it narrowed its station profile) by including various genres of world music, both "classical" and popular, into areas of classical music not normally encountered on a classical radio station, and even explores humanity itself, in all its diversity (similar to this former program), providing complementary counter-programming. Non-music programming encompasses the experimental (such as what we have IOTL with PRX Remix), the magazine format (akin to the former Day to Day and the current Here and Now) and elements in between which give the network its name (based on World of Ideas and Arts and Ideas).

Overall, the public radio landscape in New England would be somewhat different from OTL, particularly if it draws from a broader base (and the 1960s provide the foment for something like that to happen), but if things go in public television's favor, there would definitely be a trickle-down effect onto public radio as well. It just needs a bit of a push.
 
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