Last October I was lucky enough to visit four different college radio stations in Atlanta: SCAD Atlanta Radio at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), WMRE at Emory University, WRAS at Georgia State University and WREK at Georgia Tech.
Although each station had its own unique flavor, it was impressive to see the range of interesting college radio options in Atlanta.
SCAD Atlanta is online-only and reflects the eclectic tastes of its art student DJs. WRAS and WREK both broadcast throughout Atlanta at 100,000 watts, so have a much broader audience of listeners. WMRE is mostly a campus station with its broadcasts over low power AM, campus cable and the Internet.
Although WREK was not the first student radio station at Georgia Tech (an earlier campus-only station WTYJ launched with test broadcasts in 1952), it’s still a college radio pioneer. WREK and WXYC (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) were the first terrestrial radio stations to begin broadcasting online in 1994.
Even though WMRE is mostly a campus-only operation, its staff of more than 100 volunteers not only runs a radio station, but also publishes a music magazine and produces two major concerts a year.
To read more in-depth articles about each station, see my radio station field trip posts on Spinning Indie.
