WREK examines new proposals

Tech's WREK-FM student radio station may see some changes in the future, thanks to suggestions that there may be untapped potential in the station. The discussions with the station staff so far have included Institute President Wayne Clough, William Schafer, vice president of Student Services, and Alison Graab, undergraduate student body president.

According to Jeremy Varner, WREK's general manager and a sixth-year CE student, the proposed changes do not stem from WREK not meeting anyone's expectations, but instead from others seeing WREK as a valuable tool that could use its excellent coverage ability to benefit the student body and the Institute as a whole in various ways.

"WREK is a 40,000 watt station that reaches all over the metro Atlanta area with a good, clean sound," Varner said.

WREK has a streaming online feed and an archive, so students can access it in multiple ways.

"When you hear that change is coming, everyone gets worried. But I've been in a few different meetings and the more we talk the more I get the feeling that people are just curious about whether there is a way to maximize the value and get more out of WREK," Varner said.

"This discussion was not initiated by the administration. At our meeting Clough and Schafer very specifically said that the ideas were coming to them, that other people were looking at WREK and asking what can be done, and once the administration began to look at it, rightly so, they began to ask how we can maximize the value of this asset to the university, and I think that is a great discussion to have," said Colleen Terrell, professor in LCC and faculty advisor for the station.

One suggestion on the table was proposed by the Athletic Association (AA) regarding the broadcasting of sports events. WREK does cover many sports already, including volleyball, baseball and softball; it has limited coverage of Tech football, broadcasting football games after 6 p.m. only. Tech football games are normally broadcast on WQXI-AM (790 kHz) in partnership with ISP Radio who currently licenses the broadcasting rights from the AA, but for night games the coverage moves to WREK because of FCC regulations which require AM radio stations to power down at night.

"When Dan Radakovich came in as the athletic director, one of the things he wanted to do was increase the media coverage of Georgia Tech sports. [According to the AA's proposal, WREK] would cover all Tech sports and the AA could make money from the advertising, necessitating the switch to a commercial format," Varner said.

According to Varner, in addition to the WREK's stronger signal and greater coverage compared to WQXI, the AA sees a lot of revenue potential in broadcasting all of the games on WREK and running advertisements during the games, a possibility not currently permitted to the station in its current non-commercial format.

Switching to a commercial format would have various consequences for the station. The first one listeners would notice would be a move from the 91.1 MHz frequency it has traditionally held to a new one that WREK would have to carve out of Atlanta's already crowded commercial bandwidth, since stations up to 92 MHz are reserved for non-commercial stations only. Varner also said that as a non-commercial station, they currently pay reduced royalties for the songs they play and that switching to a commercial format would increase those costs significantly.

Additionally the all volunteer staff would likely switch to a paid staff, a change that, according to Varner, could cause WREK to drift away from its current direction of being an educational station.

"It probably would be nice to get paid to work at the station, but since we are not getting paid right now that's not why we're here. If we did start getting paid, people might join just to get paid, and if your motivation is just the money side then you might not be motivated by the grander scheme of increasing musical diversity, knowledge and appreciation at Tech and in Atlanta," Varner said.

Another separate proposal is for WREK to lease some of its air time during the day to Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB), which is looking for an outlet to run National Public Radio(NPR) programming. NPR already has an affiliate in Atlanta in WABE-FM (90.1) but it currently only broadcasts a small amount of NPR programming around its mostly classical music offerings. According to Varner, the time spots that GPB is seeking to use would be 6 to 9 a.m. and 3 to 6 p.m.

According to Terrell, other than the external proposals, there is great potential for bringing value to the station in the form of quality student-developed programming. "I think there are ways the station, as an asset, could be of more value to Tech and it is not entirely clear to me that broad changes like leasing parts of it to a third entity are the best way to do that. WREK has an opportunity to increase its value to the campus on its own," Terrell said.