Tag: radio

You can learn a lot from local radio. Wherever I travel, I make a point of listening to nearby stations; when I relocated to Atlanta, it was the radio that taught me about my new city. One afternoon, escaping Buckhead in bumper-to-bumper traffic and fed up with Top 40 radio (How many personal-injury lawyers are out there, really? I wondered), I turned the dial and discovered my favorite gem of them all: WREK (91.1), Georgia Tech’s student-run radio station.

From Black-owned financial institutions and restaurants to Ebenezer Baptist Church, the NAACP, and the legendary Royal Peacock nightclub, Atlanta’s Black history makers have always made their way to Auburn Avenue. So it should be no surprise that, tucked away in a small brick building on that iconic street, is the site of the first Black-owned radio station in the United States, WERD.

If there’s an Atlantan with something interesting to say, there’s a good chance they’ve said it to Rose Scott. Her radio program, Closer Look, which airs live every weekday afternoon on local NPR member station WABE, hosts a vibrant cross-section of the city’s movers and shakers, interviewed by Scott herself. “I always say we’re a curator of conversations,” she told me. “Community conversations.”

From sports to comedy, politics to music, the Atlanta podcast scene is booming. Here’s what happening in the local podcast scene, including new productions and the latest on recurring favorites.

Bill Nigut is the highly regarded former host of Georgia Public Broadcast (GPB) political talk show Political Rewind, and the new role comes at an interesting time. In June, GPB announced Political Rewind was set to sunset at the end of June, disappointing longtime listeners. This fall, he returns to airwaves to co-host the Politically Georgia podcast alongside the AJC’s award-winning reporters, Greg Bluestein, Patricia Murphy, and Tia Mitchell.

Good things have a way of disappearing in Atlanta: New condos rise above historic neighborhoods like gravestones, an iconic doughnut shop burns to the ground, a legendary music venue gets gutted to make room for a shiny office space. But on Monday, December 5, a miracle happened. It came in the form of a familiar voice, edgy and distorted, creeping through car radios like the ghost of rock and roll: "You are listening to the original 99X."

Propelled by a late-stage cancer diagnosis, veteran radio host Silas “Si-Man” Alexander plots his most meaningful production yet.

For the first time in four decades, Atlantans will have to navigate the news cycle without veteran broadcast reporter Denis O’Hayer’s treasure trove of Atlanta institutional knowledge. He shares with us his memories of reporting on Richard Jewell, the 2005 Fulton County Courthouse shooting, and more.

On Second Thought host Celeste Headlee came to Atlanta with many questions. Perhaps most poignant: “How do you live in what’s basically the black capital of America . . . and yet just a few miles outside of town you see Confederate flags flying everywhere?”

More than 20 years ago, The Moth started life as a group of friends telling stories on a St. Simons Island porch. The storytelling program will finally have a permanent presence in Atlanta with its StorySLAM open-mic competition, which will be held monthly at Dad's Garage beginning March 13.