WSBB-FM (95.5

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 ...

) is a

commercial radio Commercial broadcasting (also called private broadcasting) is the broadcasting of television programs and radio programming by privately owned corporate media, as opposed to state sponsorship, for example. It was the United States' first model ...

station licensed to

Doraville, Georgia Doraville is a city in DeKalb County, Georgia, United States northeast of Atlanta. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 10,623. History Doraville was incorporated by an act of the Georgia General Assembly, approved December 15, ...

, and serving

Metro Atlanta 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 ...

. WSBB-FM and co-owned WSB (750 AM)

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of "simultaneous broadcast") is the broadcasting of programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simultaneously) ...

news/talk Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues and consisting entirely or almost entirely of original spoken word content rather than outside music. They may feature monologues, dialogues between the hosts, interviews ...

radio format A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when Radio broadcasting, ...

. The stations are owned by the

Cox Media Group CMG Media Corporation (doing business as Cox Media Group) is an American media conglomerate principally owned by Apollo Global Management in conjunction with Cox Enterprises, which maintains a 29% minority stake in the company. The company p ...

and are among the highest-billing stations in the U.S.InsideRadio.com "Local Radio Reached $13.6 Billion Last Year" May 16, 2024. Retrieved Sept. 17, 2024
/REF> On the air, the two stations are referred to as "95.5 WSB", only occasionally mentioning the FM station's

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...

or the AM station's frequency. The studios and offices are on West Peachtree Street NE in Atlanta, in the

WSB-TV WSB-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with ABC. It is the flagship television property of locally based Cox Media Group, which has owned the station since its inception, and is sister to rad ...

and Radio Group Building. WSBB-FM has an

effective radiated power Effective radiated power (ERP), synonymous with equivalent radiated power, is an IEEE standardized definition of directional radio frequency (RF) power, such as that emitted by a radio transmitter. It is the total power in watts that would ha ...

(ERP) of 100,000 watts, the maximum for most FM stations. The

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter (often abbreviated as XMTR or TX in technical documents) is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna with the purpose of sig ...

is on the

WSB-FM WSB-FM (98.5 MHz) is a commercial radio station in Atlanta, Georgia. It carries a hot adult contemporary radio format and is owned by the Cox Media Group, serving as the group's flagship FM station. WSB-FM is the oldest FM radio station in A ...

broadcast tower Radio masts and towers are typically tall structures designed to support antennas for telecommunications and broadcasting, including television. There are two main types: guyed and self-supporting structures. They are among the tallest human-m ...

in Edgewood, just east of

Downtown Atlanta Downtown Atlanta is the central business district of Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The largest of the city's three commercial districts (Midtown Atlanta, Midtown and Buckhead being the others), it is the location of many corporate and region ...

.Radio-Locator.com/WSBB-FM
/REF> WSBB-FM broadcasts in the

HD Radio HD Radio (HDR) is a trademark for in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio broadcast technology. HD radio generally simulcast, simulcasts an existing analog radio station in digital format with less noise and with additional text information. HD R ...

hybrid format.

History

Early years

The station first signed on the air on May 1, 1948, as WGAU-FM on 99.5 MHz in

Athens, Georgia Athens is a consolidated city-county in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. Downtown Athens lies about northeast of downtown Atlanta. The University of Georgia, the state's flagship public university and an Research I university, ...

. It broadcast at 3,600 watts, simulcasting sister station WGAU, still owned by Cox. In 1956, when Channel 11 (now

WXIA-TV WXIA-TV (channel 11) is a television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by Tegna Inc. alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate WATL (channel 36). The two stations share studios at One Monroe Place on the north end ...

) came on the air in Atlanta, WGAU-FM created a second

harmonic In physics, acoustics, and telecommunications, a harmonic is a sinusoidal wave with a frequency that is a positive integer multiple of the ''fundamental frequency'' of a periodic signal. The fundamental frequency is also called the ''1st har ...

at 199.0, on top of the video carrier of WXIA-TV at 199.25. That caused interference for WXIA-TV, so WGAU-FM got permission from the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

to move to 102.5 MHz. In 1962, WGAU-FM began broadcasting each day in

stereo Stereophonic sound, commonly shortened to stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configurat ...

for six hours, the second station in Georgia to devote a significant part of its day to playing music in stereo. In 1962, WGAU-FM moved to 95.5 FM.

Country (1968–1999)

In 1968, the station became WNGC, standing for "North Georgia Country". It was

North Georgia North Georgia is the northern hilly/mountainous region in the U.S. state of Georgia. At the time of the arrival of settlers from Europe, it was inhabited largely by the Cherokee. The counties of north Georgia were often scenes of important eve ...

's first full-time FM

country music Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...

station and one of the first stand-alone FM country stations in the nation, not simply rebroadcasting a country AM station. WNGC went to a 24 hours a day schedule in 1976 and began broadcasting with an effective radiated power of 100,000 watts from the Neese Tower in Madison County.

Rhythmic (1999–2010)

In 1999, Clarke Broadcasting, long-time owner of WNGC and WGAU, wanted to sell its Athens properties.

Cox Radio CMG Media Corporation (doing business as Cox Media Group) is an American media conglomerate principally owned by Apollo Global Management in conjunction with Cox Enterprises, which maintains a 29% minority stake in the company. The company p ...

acquired the stations for $78 million. Cox decided to flip WNGC to

Top 40 In the music industry, the Top 40 is a list of the 40 currently most popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "To ...

, briefly using the WYAP call letters before settling on WBTS, using the moniker "The Beat". On September 25, 1999, the country format was dropped and the station began stunting with a loop of " Wild Thing" by

Tone-Loc Anthony Terrell Smith (born March 3, 1966), best known by his stage name Tone Lōc (), is an American rapper and actor. He is known for his raspy voice, his hit songs " Wild Thing" and " Funky Cold Medina", for which he was nominated for a Gr ...

. When "The Beat" officially signed on September 27, its direction focused on mainstream pop, dance, and rock, even though it had a rhythmic lean. Under the direction of Program Director Dale O'Brian, it would drop all mainstream pop/rock and go rhythmic full-time. The rhythmic direction paid off in the

Arbitron Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron) is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio broadcasting audiences. It was founded as the American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by mergin ...

ratings, putting them among the top 10 stations in Atlanta. With this

hip-hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hi ...

bent, WBTS competed with

WVEE WVEE (103.3 FM broadcasting, FM) – branded as ''V-103'' – is a commercial American radio station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is owned by Audacy, Inc. and airs an urban contemporary radio format. WVEE is one of the highest-r ...

and

WHTA WHTA (107.9 FM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Hampton, Georgia. The station is owned by Urban One, and serves the Metro Atlanta area with a mainstream urban radio format. WHTA's studios and offices are located inside the Centenn ...

, while on the top-40 side it competed with

WWWQ WWWQ (99.7 FM broadcasting, FM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Atlanta, Georgia, United States, carrying a contemporary hit radio format known as "Q99.7". Owned by Cumulus Media, WWWQ serves the Atlanta metropolitan area as the regio ...

and WSTR. With the implementation of

Portable People Meter The Portable People Meter (PPM), also known as the Nielsen Meter, is a system developed by Arbitron (now Nielsen Audio) to measure how many people are exposed to individual Radio broadcasting, radio stations and television stations. This also ...

s in the Atlanta

s, WBTS had the second-most listened-to

cume In the practice of measuring the size of US commercial broadcasting and newspaper audiences, cume, short for "cumulative audience", is a measure of the total number of unique consumers over a specified period. The technical definition of cume is r ...

in the market behind WVEE. In October 2005, the station switched its slogan from "Atlanta's New #1 Hit Music Station" to "Atlanta's New #1 for Hip Hop". Despite the shift, Cox was still billing the station as rhythmic top 40 (as the station still added rhythmic-friendly pop artists like

Pink Pink is a pale tint of red, the color of the Dianthus plumarius, pink flower. It was first used as a color name in the late 17th century. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, pink is the color most often associated with charm, p ...

to its

playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. ...

) and continued to report to ''R&R'''s rhythmic reporting panel. Also in 2005, Cox received FCC approval to change WBTS's

city of license In U.S., Canadian, and Mexican broadcasting, a city of license or community of license is the community that a radio station or television station is officially licensed to serve by that country's broadcast regulator. In North American broadcast ...

from Athens, a city 40 miles from Atlanta, to Doraville, a suburb of Atlanta; the station's studios and transmitter did not move with that change. In August 2006, the station tapped on-air personality Murph Dawg from

WHZT WHZT (98.1 FM) is a rhythmic contemporary radio station licensed to Williamston, South Carolina, and serving Upstate South Carolina, including Greenville and Spartanburg. It is owned by SummitMedia and branded "HOT 98.1." Its studios are at No ...

, a Cox station in Greenville to host a new morning show with 6-year Atlanta veteran Stacy C, billing it as "Murph Dawg in the Morning with Stacy C". The alliance was short-lived, and after only a few months, Murph Dawg found himself solo. In May 2007, WBTS hired a member of WHTA's "The A-Team" morning show, CJ. The newly created morning show "Murph Dawg & CJ in the Morning" rose in the 18–34 demographics. In Spring 2008, WBTS hit its highest numbers in station history, with a 6.5 share in 18–34. "Murph Dawg & CJ in the Morning" hit 5th place, with later dayparts reaching the Top 2 and Top 3 ranks. In August 2008, WBTS again pulled a personality from across the street at WHTA, tapping overnight jock and mixer Mami Chula to fill the Night Show position that had been vacant since former night host Austin left in November 2007 for a gig in

Indianapolis Indianapolis ( ), colloquially known as Indy, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Indiana, most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana, Marion ...

. Other personalities that made up the WBTS weekday lineup included K-Dubb in middays, and Maverick in afternoons. Kenny Hamilton, Traci Steele, Johnny D, and Mo Reilley rounded-out the weekend lineup with DJ Kidd handling the primary mix show duties. The station program director was Cagle with Maverick as the assistant program director/music director. In 2009, WBTS gained another competitor, as Clear Channel's WWVA-FM flipped from Spanish contemporary to rhythmic contemporary, becoming "105-7 the Groove". (WWVA-FM later hired Mami Chula for nights and Maverick for middays and programming duties after WBTS left the rhythmic format.)

News-talk (2010–present)

On August 16, 2010, Cox abruptly flipped WBTS to a

of WSB. Cox Radio officials said that the move was necessary to keep WSB, long the dominant radio station in Atlanta, relevant to younger listeners who did not usually listen to AM radio. WBTS's DJs and sales staff were offered jobs at other stations in the Cox Atlanta cluster. The callsign was changed to WSBB-FM that October 1, a move made to adjust the callsign to parallel its AM parent (the heritage

callsign remains at 98.5 FM). On July 31, 2019, WSB and WSBB rebranded as "95.5 WSB". While AM 750 remains the primary signal, all references to it were dropped aside from hourly legal station identification. WSBB-FM began broadcasting from its new transmitter location east of Atlanta on August 20, 2019. Besides a desire to reach younger listeners, WSBB-FM also serves to improve WSB's coverage in areas where the AM side's daytime signal has usually been weak. WSB's daytime coverage area is not nearly as large as that of other 50,000-watt AM stations due to Georgia's poor ground conductivity. WSB's Scott Slade hosted ''Atlanta's Morning News'' until February 2023, when he stepped back from full-time hosting. He was succeeded by evening news anchor Chris Chandler, and remains semi-retired as a fill-in host. In April 2023, 31-year morning news host Marcy Williams retired from WSB.InsideRadio.com "After Three Decades as WSB Morning News Anchor, Marcy Williams Calls It A Career" April 2023. Retrieved Sept. 17, 2024
/ref> She calculated she wrote more than 300,000 radio news stories.

Programming

WSB and WSBB-FM mostly air local news and talk shows. Weekdays begin with ''Atlanta's Morning News'', anchored by Chris Chandler, Judd Hickenbachem and Cheryl Castro. Airborne traffic reports and weather forecasts are featured every six minutes.

Clark Howard Clark Brian Howard (born June 20, 1955) is an American author and radio/podcast host, focused primarily on personal finance, consumer protection, and related topics. He has hosted ''The Clark Howard Show,'' which began in 1989 and has lasted ov ...

provides consumer reports. Middays, afternoons and early evenings feature local talk programs. They include ''The Mark Arum Show, The Erick Erickson Show. The Von Haessler Doctrine'' hosted by Eric Von Haessler and ''The Shelley Wynter Show''. A delayed broadcast of ''

The Sean Hannity Show ''The Sean Hannity Show'' is a conservative talk radio show hosted by Sean Hannity. The program is broadcast live every weekday, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET. The show is produced in the New York City studios of radio station WOR and is transmitt ...

'' airs at 9 p.m., syndicated via

Premiere Networks Premiere Networks, Inc. (formerly Premiere Radio Networks, shortened as PRN) is an American media company, a subsidiary of iHeartMedia, for which it currently serves as its main original radio content distribution and production arm. It is th ...

, with repeats of daytime shows heard overnight. Weekends feature shows on gardening, home repair, cars, real estate, health and money, some of which are paid

brokered programming Brokered programming (also known as time-buy and blocktime) is a form of broadcast content in which the show's producer pays a radio or television station for air time, rather than exchanging programming for pay or the opportunity to play spot com ...

. Syndicated weekend shows include '' Bill Handel on the Law, The Kim Komando Show, Eye on Travel with Peter Greenberg'' and ''

Face The Nation ''Face the Nation'' is a weekly news and Sunday morning talk show, morning public affairs program airing Sundays on the CBS radio and Television broadcasting, television network. Created by Frank Stanton (executive), Frank Stanton in 1954, ''Fa ...

''. WSB and WSBB-FM are

affiliate Affiliation or affiliate may refer to: * Affiliate (commerce), a legal form of entity relationship used in Business Law * Affiliation (family law), a legal form of family relationship * Affiliate marketing * Affiliate network or affiliation platfo ...

s of

CBS News Radio CBS News Radio, formerly known as CBS Radio News and historically known as the CBS Radio Network, is a radio network that provides news to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by Paramount Global. It ...

. The stations have a news sharing agreement with

. WSB and WSBB-FM serve as the

flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of navy, naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically ...

radio stations for the

University of Georgia The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...

Bulldogs The Bulldog is a British breed of dog of mastiff type. It may also be known as the English Bulldog or British Bulldog. It is a stocky, muscular dog of medium size, with a large head, thick folds of skin around the face and shoulders and a rel ...

Radio Network, carrying all Bulldogs football and

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appro ...

games.

References

External links

* * {{COXMG Cox Media Group News and talk radio stations in the United States HD Radio stations Radio stations established in 1948 SBB-FM 1948 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)