Operates a translator
in Atlanta on 100.7, 10 watts.
Studios:
GCATT, 14th Street,
Atlanta
Owner:
Georgia Peach State
Public Radio
Noted Personalities:
-
History:
The following historical
information has been taken with permission from the excellent Atlanta
Radio Guide:
Both Peach State and Georgia Public TV are divisions
of state-run Georgia Public Broadcasting. GPTV broadcasts to the Atlanta
area from its Athens station, WGTV Channel 8. Programming for the tv and
radio networks originates from state-of-the-art digital studios in Atlanta.
The facilities were almost nixed by state legislators after GPTV broadcast
the PBS series "Tales of the City" in the early/mid 90s. In the aftermath
of that broadcast, the then executive director was forced to retire and
a new director was appointed before the legislators would approve funding
for the new $30 million studios. The studios are part of the new GCATT
complex on 14th Street in urban Atlanta. When GPB moved to the GCATT complex
in 1997, then Executive Director Werner Rodgers said of the facility, "It
is the most technically advanced public television and radio facility in
the nation and the first fully digital production center - public or commercial
- in Georgia."
GPB is heavily in debt because of unbridled spending
on office furnishings and high-tech equipment. One if its latest snafoos
involved a $801,740 contract awarded without competitive bidding to a private
firm to develop and run a satellite delivered class to 106 students. In
late spring 1999, Governor Barnes fired GPB Executive Director Werner Rogers
and the board of directors of the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission,
the policy-making board that oversees GPB. He appointed Kim King, a former
Georgia Tech football player, as new head of the GPTC. Before the firings,
the Augusta Chronicle wrote, "The (just completed state) audit makes clear
that GPB's soaring deficits have much more to do with slipshod and possibly
corrupt management than it does with state funding shortages and ungenerous
GPTV viewers."
In summer of '99, Peach State discontinued "Adventures
in Good Music" with Carl Haas and the NPR program "World of Opera" as a
cost cutting move. A program featuring music and folklore of singing cowboys
replaced the opera.
