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Dear Decaturish – I like the new WRAS

D'ish Metro ATL

Dear Decaturish – I like the new WRAS

FILE PHOTO, May 16,2014: Right to left: Jenny Nesvetailova, Josh Martin, Ana Zimitravich and Alayna Fabricius discuss the results of a meeting with GSU officials. Photo by Dan Whisenhunt
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FILE PHOTO, May 16,2014: Right to left: Jenny Nesvetailova, Josh Martin, Ana Zimitravich and Alayna Fabricius discuss the results of a meeting with GSU officials. Photo by Dan Whisenhunt

FILE PHOTO, May 16,2014: Right to left: Jenny Nesvetailova, Josh Martin, Ana Zimitravich and Alayna Fabricius discuss the results of a meeting with GSU officials. Photo by Dan Whisenhunt

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Dear Decaturish,

I am here to out myself as one of the few listeners who are actually excited about the new format at WRAS.  I have been waiting entire adult life to have a public radio station that parallels that of all the major metropolitan areas in the US.   Not only that, but it also parallels the programming of the rest of the state of Georgia.  It’s been a long time coming.

I am telling you this with the full understanding that I look like a jerk.  I know that.  I am a selfish, albeit conscientious person.  I also understand that there is a huge hole in the hearts of many people who believed in the station.  It is regrettable that the takeover had to be on 88.5 and not another station.   But that won’t keep me away.  I will listen to WRAS and it’ll be locked in.  WABE is partly to blame for this hot mess.  If they’d get up to speed and dump the classical format, this may have been avoided.

I don’t have the answer to this question, but I will ask it anyway:  are the students really missing the station?  The majority of GSU students probably didn’t listen to the station.  With so many other digital outlets at their disposal, it’s seems prehistoric to imagine the kids hooked up to a radio station at all.

Why do they need a radio station?  Was the Album 88 format a service to its paying constituents or a service to the community at large?  From the responses on your site, to those at Creative Loafing and elsewhere in the blogosphere, it seems the loudest protesters are a graying group that are balled up in a dark corner with this sad turn of events.

I’ll be a pariah for having said this, I suppose, but I’ll admit it.

–          Betsy Carnathan

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