Wikipedia
WRAS FM 88.5 ("Album 88") is a college radio station in Atlanta with a frequency of 88.5 MHz, which has been in operation since January 18, 1971. It is owned by Georgia State University and its on-air staff are all GSU students, with the exception of those who broadcast the university's athletic events for the station (the Georgia State radio network). WRAS has the highest power (100,000 watts ERP) of any student-staffed radio station in the world — a distinction it now shares with WREK at Georgia Tech in Atlanta since October 2011.
The station's first general manager was Richard Belcher, well known to Atlanta TV viewers for his investigative reporting on WAGA-TV 5, and now WSB-TV 2. The "Album 88" name dates back to the late 1970s, and is unusual, as it is still rare for noncommercial stations in North America to use a moniker (other than their own broadcast callsign), the way commercial stations have for decades. It refers to the album-based rotation the station employs: stressing several cuts from each album rather than a single. The station is non-commercial educational, with the only breaks in between songs being song listings, public service announcements, promos for various WRAS shows, brief news segments, and community affairs shows.
The station has won countless awards, frequently beating out commercial radio stations, from the Atlanta weekly Creative Loafing, the monthly Atlanta magazine, and the College Music Journal. The station has over 50 student volunteers who host rotation shifts from 2am onwards, as well as specialty shows that start at 8pm most weekdays, 6pm on Thursdays, 2pm on Fridays, and 8am on weekends. Many of the non-student envoys to the administration of the school also worked at the station in their college days.
Among the specialty shows on Album 88 are: The Georgia Music Show (dedicated exclusively to artists from Georgia), I Don't Care ( punk), Soul Kitchen ( funk, soul, disco and related), Crossroads ( blues), Jet Lag (international psychedelia), New Theory ( chillwave), Beatscape Lounge ( ambient, electronica and nu jazz), Subterranean ( drum and bass), Cowtipper's Delight ( classic country and alternative country), Dot Dash ( post-punk), Mighty Aphrodite (female vocalists), We're Not Gonna Take It ( heavy-metal music), Tower of Song (psyche, prog, freakbeat), a large variety of hip hop including the long-running shows Tha Message, Rhythm and Vibes (Atlanta's longest-running hip hop show) and Hush Hush ( instrumental hip hop), One Step Beyond ( ska, bluebeat & rocksteady) and many more.
WRAS has played a crucial role in "breaking" a wide range of artists including R.E.M., Deerhunter and Outkast (all of which WRAS was the first to play on radio). The station featured more commercially identifable rock in the 1970s and early 1980s; many of the platinum and gold records that hang in the station's offices reflect this. According to Bob Geldof he penned the Boomtown Rats hit song, " I Don't Like Mondays" in the WRAS office after reading a telex report of the schoolyard shooting on which the song is based.
On March 14, 2008, an F-2 tornado struck Atlanta's downtown core and led to the evacuation of students and employees from various areas of the Georgia State campus. WRAS was thus forced to suspend broadcasting for nearly two days. (See 2008 Atlanta tornado)
, WRAS has a construction permit to move to the Atlanta Public Schools facility, which transmits WABE FM 90.1, and WPBA TV 21 ( DTV 30.1) east of downtown. It currently transmits via a studio/transmitter link from the Panthersville area (no apparent relation the GSU Panthers mascot), located southeast of the city between I-285 and I-20). The change will expand the station's broadcast range significantly to the northwest, and very slightly even toward the south and east, due to a greater height.
WRAS may mean:
- WRAS (FM) 88.5 radio at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, United States
- Water Regulations Advisory Scheme conformance mark in the United Kingdom