WABE

Infobox Radio Station


name = WABE
airdate = 1948
frequency = 90.1 MHz HD Radio
90.1 HD-2 for Classical music
90.1 HD-3 for News & Talk
city = Atlanta, Georgia
area = Atlanta metropolitan area
format = Public radio
owner = Atlanta Public Schools / Atlanta Educational Telecommunications Collaborative, Inc.
licensee = Board of Education, City of Atlanta
erp = 96,000 watts
haat = 250.4 meters
branding = "90.1 FM WABE" (on FM and HD)
"WABE Classical" (on HD-2)
"WABE News" (on HD-3)
affiliations = National Public Radio
Public Radio International
American Public Media
slogan =
class = Class C1 Non-Commercial FM Station
facility_id = 3538
webcast = [http://www.pba.org/listen/wabe/ Listen Live]
website = [http://www.pba.org/ www.pba.org]
callsign_meaning = W
Atlanta
Board of
Education

WABE 90.1 is a radio station in Atlanta, Georgia, that is affiliated with National Public Radio (NPR). WABE's format features mostly classical music. It carries the NPR flagship programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered, with newscasts interjected periodically.

The station is licensed to the Atlanta Board of Education (hence the "ABE" in the call sign), although a non-profit umbrella corporation has been established to oversee the station's daily operations. The station's signal reaches practically all of the northwestern and north-central parts of the state. WABE is the dominant public radio station in metropolitan Atlanta; Georgia Public Broadcasting serves most of the remainder of the state with such programs.

WABE also broadcasts the Georgia Radio Reading Service and educational programming via subcarriers on its frequency.

History

WABE has always been operated by the city school system. It started in 1948 and may well have been the first-ever noncommercial radio station in the Southern U.S., at least on the FM band. Its first studios were located in the former Atlanta City Hall. The station moved, along with television station WETV (now WPBA), Channel 30, into facilities in northeastern Atlanta in 1958, where both stations remain to this day.

The school board used WABE strictly as a medium for educational (i.e., in-school) broadcasts until sometime in the early 1970s, when classical music broadcasts (and likely evening broadcasts also) premiered on the station. The early 1970s also saw the beginnings of NPR network programming, an increase of transmission power, and the introduction of stereo broadcasting. By the early 1980s, the educational programs heard during school hours moved, thanks to the development of subcarrier technologies, to subchannels, leaving the main FM frequency free to broadcast music and news shows for adults. The station finally expanded its hours to around-the-clock service and established a tower on Stone Mountain, which it used until 2004, when transmission moved to the tower of sister TV station WPBA in the DeKalb County portion of East Atlanta.

Since that time, WABE has grown steadily in listeners served, mainly because Atlanta is one of the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan areas, and the fastest-growing of the largest 15 or so.

Local weekday hosts

Steve Goss — joined WABE after 28 years at 94.9 FM (WPCH, later WLTM) as local host of "Morning Edition".

Lois Reitzes — is the longtime host of the morning classical-music program "Second Cup Concert" and of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra broadcasts. She came to WABE in 1979 from WFIU-FM in Bloomington, Indiana. Reitzes served as a classical-music host for WFIU while working toward a double major in piano and musicology at Indiana University. Reitzes is also an accomplished pianist.

Wanda Yang Temko — hosts the "Afternoon Classics" classical program. Like Lois Reitzes, Temko graduated from IU-Bloomington's music school and announced on WFIU-FM. She sings in operatic performances in the Atlanta area, as well as with the Atlanta Symphony Chorus and the Atlanta Festival Singers. She teaches voice too. Temko also announces on Saturday afternoons and hosts the program "The Art of Song" on Sunday evenings.

John Lemley — joined the station's on-air team in 1997 as host of an afternoon classical-music program, "Daytime". The program is now known as "Afternoon Classics" (see above). In 2005, he was named local anchor of NPR's daily news magazine, "All Things Considered". Lemley also serves as producer and host of WABE's "Tapestry", a weekly program of choral music. Lemley can also be heard on WABE's companion television station, WPBA-TV, as daytime voiceover announcer. Lemley came to WABE from WBHM-FM in Birmingham, Alabama, where he also served as afternoon host. In Birmingham, from 1987 to 1997, he was also one of the biggest names in the Magic City's theatre scene, performing with Town & Gown Theatre, Summerfest, Birmingham-Southern Theatre, and Birmingham Children's Theatre.

Robert Hubert — a veteran of over two decades on WABE's staff, Hubert hosts the evening classical-music program "Nocturne" and serves as the station's music librarian and webmaster. He also hosts "Atlanta Music Scene", heard on Monday evenings during his regular program.

Local specialty program hosts

H. Johnson — a legendary Atlanta broadcaster in his own right, he has hosted the Saturday-night "Jazz Classics" show since the early 1980s. Johnson, known only by his first initial (he has admitted on the air to Herman), for many years was a disc jockey on WAOK-AM, one of Atlanta's heritage African-American stations.

Valerie Jackson — hosts the book-review program "Between the Lines", heard early Thursday evenings. She is the widow of the late Maynard Jackson, mayor of Atlanta during the mid- and late-1970s.

Miscellany

WABE's call sign was WPBA-FM for a month in 1984, at the same time WETV's call sign was changed to WPBA. The radio station's call sign was changed back because of confusion.

External links

* [http://www.pba.org/ WABE Website]
*FMQ|WABE
*FML|WABE
*FMARB|WABE
*Geolinks-US-buildingscale|33.75889|-84.33528