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WABE (90.1
MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...
) – branded ''90.1 FM WABE'' – is a
non-commercial educational A non-commercial educational station (NCE station) is a radio station or television station that does not accept on-air advertisements (television advertisement, TV ads or radio advertisement, radio ads), as defined in the United States by the Fed ...
FM
radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...
licensed to
Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
, and serving the
Atlanta metropolitan area Metro Atlanta, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell metropolitan statistical area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the sixt ...
, serving as the
National Public Radio National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
(NPR) member station for the market. Owned by
Atlanta Public Schools Atlanta Public Schools (APS) is a school district based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is run by the Atlanta Board of Education with Superintendent Dr. Bryan Johnson. The system has an active enrollment of 54,956 students, attending ...
and licensed to the Atlanta Board of Education, it is a
sister A sister is a woman or a girl who shares parents or a parent with another individual; a female sibling. The male counterpart is a brother. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to ref ...
outlet to
PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
member station WABE-TV (channel 30) and local
educational access Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education also fol ...
cable service APS Cable Channel 22. The three outlets share studios on Bismark Road in the Morningside/Lenox Park section of Atlanta; WABE-TV's transmitter is located on New Street Northeast (south of DeKalb Avenue) in the city's Edgewood neighborhood. WABE carries a general public radio schedule with local hosts Lois Reitzes, Rose Scott and H. Johnson and produces the
Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Foster Peabody, George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and in ...
-winning podcast '' Buried Truths'' with Hank Klibanoff. In September 1994, a nonprofit corporation, the Atlanta Educational Telecommunications Collaborative, Inc., was founded to provide financial, promotional, and volunteer support for WABE (as well as WABE-TV channel 30 and Atlanta Public Schools cable channel 22). WABE's signal reaches practically all of the northwestern and north-central parts of the state. It is the dominant
public radio Public broadcasting (or public service broadcasting) is radio, television, and other electronic media outlets whose primary mission is public service with a commitment to avoiding political and commercial influence. Public broadcasters receive ...
station in metropolitan Atlanta, but starting on June 30, 2014, has been joined during the daytime by
Georgia Public Broadcasting Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) is a state network of PBS member television stations and NPR member radio stations serving the U.S. state of Georgia. It is operated by the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission, an agency of the ...
's Atlanta feed on 88.5 WRAS-FM. GPB provides public radio programming to most of the rest of the state.


History

On October 16, 1947, the Atlanta Board of Education received a construction permit to build a new noncommercial educational radio station on 90.1 MHz in Atlanta. ( Guide to reading History Cards) The station took the call letters WABE, representing its owner. The facility was completed by May 1948, when on-air tests were run, but it would not be until the next school year when WABE entered into full-time service on September 13. Initially, WABE ran exclusively instructional programming for students in Atlanta and Fulton County schools and was the first station of its kind in the Southeast. The Rich's Foundation had donated equipment to run the station; at the time, Rich's produced educational radio programming that aired on a six-station network in Georgia, which included WABE when it signed on. The first
radio studio A recording studio is a specialized facility for recording and mixing of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enough to record a single sin ...
s were in two rooms on the 14th floor of the
Atlanta City Hall Atlanta City Hall is the headquarters of the City of Atlanta government. It was constructed in 1930, and is located in Downtown Atlanta. It is a high-rise office tower very similar to dozens of other city halls built in the United States duri ...
; the station moved to its present quarters on Bismark Road in 1957. The former Rock Springs Elementary School would also house WETV, the first educational television station in Georgia, which began broadcasting in February 1958. It was not until the early 1970s that the station significantly broadened its output to include non-instructional programs. The station added more evening hours in 1971 and began regular weekend broadcasts for the first time. In 1973, "Friends of WABE" was formed, giving the station its first community volunteer organization; broadcasting in stereo began in April 1974 after commercial radio station owner GCC Communications gave a grant for new equipment. In 1979, WABE won its first
George Foster Peabody Award The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor what are described as the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in ...
for a two-part program, ''The Eyewitness Who Wasn't: The Matthews Murder Trials''. The late 1970s and early 1980s also saw other changes, notably the formation of a Public Broadcasting Association to advise on the operations of WETV and WABE and Fulton County's decision to stop funding WABE and WETV in 1982, which almost led the Atlanta school board to turn both over to GPB. Ultimately, the factor that dissuaded the Board of Education from handing over its broadcasting outlets was the fact that it was a minority school system and had no interest in turning over the services to a predominantly White group. The early 1980s also brought major changes that cemented WABE's service to Atlanta. After nearly 35 years, instructional programming was distributed to schools directly beginning in the 1982–83 school year, freeing up daytime hours for public radio programming. The radio station then relocated to
Stone Mountain Stone Mountain is a quartz monzonite dome Inselberg, monadnock and the site of Stone Mountain Park, east of Atlanta, Georgia. Outside the park is the city of Stone Mountain, Georgia. The park is the most visited tourist site in the state of Ge ...
in April 1983 at an increased power of 100,000 watts, greatly improving coverage. It would remain on Stone Mountain until 2004, when technical considerations relating to the digital television transition displaced WPBA from the site. A 1991 study suggested a move to a multicultural format for WABE, which drew the ire of public broadcasting supporters. The advisory board campaigned in 1993 to take full control of the stations; this led to its restructuring as the Atlanta Educational Telecommunications Collaborative in 1994. Later in the decade, the statewide network made another overture to take over WPBA and WABE, which the Atlanta Board of Education rebuffed, with the racial composition of channel 30's management compared to the state agency again being cited. Into the 2010s, WABE continued to broadcast classical music during daytime hours, even as most public radio stations in large markets were moving toward speech-based daytime schedules, in large part because of Reitzes, the longest-tenured air personality on Atlanta radio. As a result, many NPR programs that became mainstays after the network's rapid programming expansion in the 1990s, such as '' The Diane Rehm Show'', '' Talk of the Nation'', '' Here and Now'', '' On Point'', ''
The Story with Dick Gordon ''The Story with Dick Gordon'' was a weekday interview program hosted by Dick Gordon, former host of WBUR's ''The Connection (radio program), The Connection'' and, before that, fill-in host for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's national ra ...
'' and ''
Newshour ''Newshour'' is BBC World Service's flagship international news and current affairs radio programme, which is broadcast twice daily: weekdays at 1400, weekends at 1300 and nightly at 2100 (UK time). There is also an additional online programme ...
'' from the
BBC World Service The BBC World Service is a British Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcas ...
, were not heard until WABE added all-classical and all-news/talk HD Radio subchannels in 2006. In 2014, the station announced that, beginning in January 2015, the classical programming would move exclusively to the station's HD2 subchannel, to be replaced by new national and local programming (including a two-hour arts program hosted by Reitzes) alongside an addition of seven employees to the news staff. The substitution of more popular news programming for classical shows helped to fuel ratings growth at WABE, which increased its ratings by 45 percent from 2015 to 2019. In 2019, '' Buried Truths'', a podcast from WABE hosted by Hank Klibanoff, won the station its second Peabody Award. On January 19, 2022, Public Broadcasting Atlanta rebranded both WABE and WPBA-TV, along with their websites, podcasts and smartphone apps, as a single unified entity named WABE, with a new logo and slogan, "Amplifying Atlanta", and a call sign change for the television station.


Local programming and productions

During the day, WABE mixes public radio programs from
NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
and other producers—including ''
Morning Edition ''Morning Edition'' is an American radio news program produced and distributed by NPR. It airs weekday mornings (Monday through Friday) and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 5:00 to 9:00 a ...
'', ''
All Things Considered ''All Things Considered'' (''ATC'') is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio (NPR). It was the first news program on NPR, premiering on May 3, 1971. It is broadcast live on NPR affiliated stations in the United ...
'', '' Here and Now'', ''
Fresh Air ''Fresh Air'' is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States since 1985. It is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The show's hosts are Terry Gross and Tonya Mosl ...
'', and ''
Marketplace A marketplace, market place, or just market, is a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods. In different parts of the world, a marketplace may be described as a ''souk'' (from ...
''—with its own local shows, including ''City Lights with Lois Reitzes'', covering the arts; ''Closer Look with Rose Scott''. Weekends continue to feature musical programming, including broadcasts of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and two programs hosted by H. Johnson: ''Jazz Classics'' on Saturday nights and ''Blues Classics'' on Friday nights. On Sunday nights, ''The Atlanta Music Scene'' presents concerts from venues in the area.


Notable hosts

* Lois Reitzes, host of the arts program ''City Lights'' and with WABE since 1979 * H. Johnson, host of the Saturday night program ''Jazz Classics'' and Friday night program ''Blues Classics''


References


External links

* * {{Atlanta Public Schools 1948 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) NPR member stations Radio stations established in 1948 ABE Peabody Award winners