From a post I made on GPB's Facebook page:
It seems in all this brouhaha over the WRAS "takeover" that one motivation is emerging rather clearly aside from GPB's desire to infringe upon WABE's market share. I suspect that an underlying rationale behind finding some way to get a foothold in the Atlanta listening area is to keep suburban (mostly Republican) state legislators off GPB's backs. Namely, I am rather sure, in this day and time, and especially given the NPR controversies in recent years, that their constituents oppose subsidizing a broadcast outlet that they cannot hear clearly on their car radios.
Up until now, except for a few parts of the western metro area, GPB radio (and before that, the "Peach State" iteration) could not be heard in the area, and most people were fine with that, since WABE managed to please everybody in the pre-news/talk era. But throw in massive population growth mainly from other parts of the country, aging classical audiences, and fragmentation of taste (i.e., listeners accustomed to separate formats on different stations), and you have today's situation. There's nothing really conspiratorial about any of that, regardless of how one views the GSU/GPB negotiations.
This, of course, does not pertain to WGTV--that station has always been available to Atlantans from its inception in 1960 (its duplication with channel 30 is another story). But NPR has had a much stronger cultural profile as of late than PBS, and, despite the widespread view that some other outlet should have been chosen other than WRAS, this is a trend that has occurred elsewhere and is going to happen in other places in the near future. College radio has been in decline due to a number of factors. Atlanta is still lucky, in my view, to have WREK at Tech. I would suggest the WRAS protestors turn their efforts toward helping that station (and thus perhaps strengthening it) and letting go of a lost cause in opposing GPB programming on WRAS. They are vastly outnumbered in any case by NPR news/talk listeners. The argument that daytime NPR fanciers should tune to online platforms actually cuts both ways--the same thing can be said of most alternative music genres.
And while on the subject, can any of you tell me whether you think daytime classical music was ever a big draw on GPB in outstate Georgia? It seems like the main two audiences were concentrated in Athens (WUGA) and Savannah (WSVH), but I may be mistaken.
It seems in all this brouhaha over the WRAS "takeover" that one motivation is emerging rather clearly aside from GPB's desire to infringe upon WABE's market share. I suspect that an underlying rationale behind finding some way to get a foothold in the Atlanta listening area is to keep suburban (mostly Republican) state legislators off GPB's backs. Namely, I am rather sure, in this day and time, and especially given the NPR controversies in recent years, that their constituents oppose subsidizing a broadcast outlet that they cannot hear clearly on their car radios.
Up until now, except for a few parts of the western metro area, GPB radio (and before that, the "Peach State" iteration) could not be heard in the area, and most people were fine with that, since WABE managed to please everybody in the pre-news/talk era. But throw in massive population growth mainly from other parts of the country, aging classical audiences, and fragmentation of taste (i.e., listeners accustomed to separate formats on different stations), and you have today's situation. There's nothing really conspiratorial about any of that, regardless of how one views the GSU/GPB negotiations.
This, of course, does not pertain to WGTV--that station has always been available to Atlantans from its inception in 1960 (its duplication with channel 30 is another story). But NPR has had a much stronger cultural profile as of late than PBS, and, despite the widespread view that some other outlet should have been chosen other than WRAS, this is a trend that has occurred elsewhere and is going to happen in other places in the near future. College radio has been in decline due to a number of factors. Atlanta is still lucky, in my view, to have WREK at Tech. I would suggest the WRAS protestors turn their efforts toward helping that station (and thus perhaps strengthening it) and letting go of a lost cause in opposing GPB programming on WRAS. They are vastly outnumbered in any case by NPR news/talk listeners. The argument that daytime NPR fanciers should tune to online platforms actually cuts both ways--the same thing can be said of most alternative music genres.
And while on the subject, can any of you tell me whether you think daytime classical music was ever a big draw on GPB in outstate Georgia? It seems like the main two audiences were concentrated in Athens (WUGA) and Savannah (WSVH), but I may be mistaken.