"We are trying to make actual the notion of 'All Things Considered,'" said Jerry L. Hargis, associate director for communication services at the Georgia Center. "Although to the radio audience, it may appear as public affairs programming or info- or edu-tainment, what WUGA-FM is trying to do is to speak to the rich diversity of resources here at the Georgia Center and in the University community through programs or commentaries."
"WUGA-FM is a public voice to the immediate geographic center here in Athens," Hargis said. "Most residential continuing education centers bring in most of their visitors from outside the local area. The radio station brings local residents to the Center; it gives a voice to our local constituency that may not regularly come here in person."
Station Manager Gene Craven said that the Center benefits from the station's outreach to more than 25,000 local listeners weekly, and another 100,000 listeners through programs carried on the Peach State Public Radio Network, with 11 affiliates throughout Georgia including WUGA-FM. "We are a mass media operation. This is a wonderful opportunity for the programs of the Center. We are getting the word out about what the Georgia Center is and what it does," Craven said.
Although public radio stations are commonly connected with journalism colleges or music schools, or other academic units within a university, being associated with the Georgia Center has given the station particular advantages and has made unique resources available. "The resources we have because of our connection to the Georgia Center are tremendous," said Craven. "We have an in-house print shop, graphics team, marketing team, and a great facility in which to hold special events and receptions."
"We are both public service entities," Craven said. "We serve our listeners with high quality/educational programming, and the Georgia Center serves adult and continuing education needs. There's a dovetail there between the two."
Recent examples of programming between WUGA-FM and other Georgia Center events and facilities are the international broadcasters visit, which combined WUGA-FM's facilities and Craven's direction with the Georgia Center's facilities; the WUGA-produced program "The Hungry Ear," which created two live public broadcasts from the Georgia Center's Masters Hall; the successful radio series "Berlin Calling," which is currently being transformed into a television series; and the UGA conference "Black and White Perspectives on the American South," which was turned into four radio programs.
The station has also added a translator. This translator, broadcasting on the 97.9 frequency, serves as a back-up to the main frequency of 91.7 so that between the translator and the power boost, WUGA-FM's signal will not be affected as much as it is now by terrain.
"All FM broadcasting involves line-of-sight transmission, so whenever you hit a hill or valley, it may interfere with the signal you receive," Station Manager Gene Craven said. "The combination of these two additions should significantly improve our reception."
"A number of National Public Radio stations have added Web pages recently," said Gene Craven, WUGA-FM station manager. "Because it's a multi-media system, enabling users to access graphics, pictures, audio, even video, and text information, it lends itself well to information about radio stations."
"As many people as are connected to the Internet, I think it's a logical way to distribute programming down the road. Then, we're not restricted by our broadcast area anymore."
Craven said that, now, most audio available on Web sites is low-quality, compressed sound, and is dependent on the user's having a good audio card installed in his or her personal computer, "but that's becoming more and more standard." In the future, he thinks audio quality will increase, and memory and hard-drive space on personal computers will be increased as well to handle incoming information.
Currently, the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at The University of Georgia is capturing WUGA-FM news stories and adding them to its Web page as well. WUGA-FM plans to include Olympics modules on the Web, as part of its coverage and distribution of Olympics stories next year. The 1996 Atlanta Olympics are scheduled for July 19 through August 5. Athens, Georgia/The University of Georgia will host three events--soccer, volleyball, and rhythmic gymnastics.
Visit the WUGA-FM web site at http://www.gactr.uga.edu/WUGA/index.html.
In WUGA-FM's studios are, l. to r., Yuri Smolnikov, on-air personality of Baikal Wave of Irkutsk; Lev Yalkov, program director for Radio Rendevous in Nizhny Novgorod; Tatiana Maevskaya, deputy manager for Baikal Wave; and Mary Kay Mitchell, news director for WUGA-FM.A group of broadcasters from the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union visiting the Georgia Center and WUGA-FM as part of an international training project learned new ideas and technology they could apply at their home stations. Twelve broadcasters from the Russian Federation and the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union visited for nine days in February, as the second part of the Russian/NIS Radio Project, a training program designed by WUGA-FM Station Manager Gene Craven to bring broadcasters from the two countries together. The broadcasters learned about marketing, advertising, broadcast management, audience research, freedom of the press, and new technology, mainly from the faculty of The University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. In addition, the broadcasters had the opportunity to sit in on sessions with the annual Georgia Association of Broadcasters Institute held at the Georgia Center.
"The training program emphasized ideas more than technology," Craven said, "because on the air they sound OK, and although technology may extend their signals and make them sound better, it's more important to them now to learn to advertise and narrow the focus of their formats."
Although the technology found at radio stations and networks owned by the Russian or former Soviet Union states is from the '50s and '60s, it was the ideas behind efficient station management, audience information and advertising, and the free press that intrigued the broadcasters most about the U.S. broadcast industry.
The Faculty and the Topics Addressed
A number of faculty members in the Grady College conducted training sessions, as follows:
Alison Alexander, head of the Telecommunications Department, spearheaded efforts to coordinate instruction. "We put sessions together. Finding the talent to teach sessions was no problem," said Alexander.
Barry Sherman, director of the Peabody Awards and a researcher in telecommunications management, covered the history and foundation of American broadcasting, and the industry structure.
James Fletcher, professor and audience research specialist, covered audience research.
Allen McLeod, associate professor in telecommunications and an experienced producer, discussed creative production, including commercials and radio programs.
Also conducting training was Mary Betts, retired station manager of WGAU/WNGC radio stations of Athens, who had already worked with radio broadcasters in Eastern Europe. Betts covered the day-to-day routines of station management.
"There were also one-on-one sessions with all of us," Alexander said, "a chance for them to tell us about their work. It was an amazing interchange, because what they were telling us was so different from our own experience. It was very intriguing to hear what they had to say."
"My sense is that the people of the former Soviet Union learned to be very pragmatic, and I was impressed that they were moving toward free press, but cautious about how far they could go," Alexander said. "I suspect they felt they had to be cautious about bounds they may overstep. It's a balancing act for them. There's always a worry that the party may come back into power."
Evolution of Project
Craven submitted a proposal for the training program at the request of Friendship Force in Atlanta, which was funded by a grant from the Eurasia Foundation with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Friendship Force is a private organization that arranges citizen exchanges and is just starting to create professional development exchanges. Georgia Center Associate Director for Communication Services Jerry Hargis contacted Alexander about Grady College faculty providing training.
During the first phase of the project, Craven and members from four designated sister stations/networks in the United States traveled to Russia and the Republics of Belarus and Georgia in December, 1994, to assess those countries' radio training needs, and plan a program of training that would be most beneficial to them.
The four U.S. stations/networks paired with the four stations in the Newly Independent States were: WHIO of Dayton, Ohio, with Radio Rendezvous in Nizhny Novgorod; WGST-AM of Atlanta with Georgian State Radio in Tbilisi of the former Soviet state of Georgia; Peach State Public Radio Network of Georgia, with Baikal Wave of Irkutsk; and the Minnesota Public Network, with Belarus State Radio.
A Radio Frontier
Craven discovered many differences between U.S. radio stations and those he visited in the Newly Independent States. "The newer commercial radio stations, Radio Rendezvous and Baikal Wave, have good technology and good on-air talent, but a widely varying format, with everything from R.E.M. to Sinatra, and they're not making money. The concept of commercialization is new to them. They have no audience demographics, and they haven't figured out how to target an audience and sell advertising based on that. In addition, the business owners--the new entrepreneurs--are still looking only to print advertising; they haven't discovered yet how effective radio advertising can be," Craven said.
State-owned radio stations have older technology and are generally greatly overemployed. "Belarus State Radio in Minsk is comparable to the BBC in that it's also a network service. They're beginning to feel the pressure from the state to become more efficient, to produce more with fewer people," Craven said.
"As an example, the radio station has an auditorium-sized recording studio. They still employ an 80-voice choir and a 110-piece orchestra to perform live concerts for broadcast," he said.
"We knew we had individuals from different types of stations," Alexander said. "The state radio stations are very different from the upstart commercial stations. And the faculty were concerned about the varying experience of the participants--the stations sent everybody from general managers to DJs. But there were lots of questions and issues raised in all of the sessions."
"In a way I envy them," Alexander said. "They're starting from scratch. Here, our audiences expect certain things, certain programming. Our industry is set. Theirs is new; it's a frontier. I wish them great luck in creating their own system."
After training in current American broadcasting trends and techniques at the Georgia Center, the 12 visiting broadcasters went to each of the four sister stations for 10-day internships. After the internships, the broadcasters flew to Washington, D.C., and spent four days sightseeing, and visiting the Association for International Journalists, the Voice of America, and the Federal Communications Commission.
The next phase of the project involves another exchange between sister stations, with American broadcasters spending a week or two abroad as arranged by the stations. The final stage of the project is an elaborate evaluation of the project.
Craven said he is ready to try more international training programs, based on the positive experience of this one. "Now that we've learned how to do it, and everyone had very good, positive feelings about the experience, I think this kind of programming is exactly what we should be doing. It certainly falls within our mission at WUGA-FM and the Georgia Center. It was also an effort that brought in many entities--faculty, conferences, facilities, the international development arm of UGA's Office of the Vice President for Services, and outside organizations," Craven said.
For more information, contact WUGA-FM, Georgia Center for Continuing Education, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-3603, 706-542-9842. E-mail: wuga@gactr.uga.edu.
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Web administrator: webmaster@gactr.uga.edu All contents copyright (C) 1996. University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education All rights reserved. Last revised: 1/31/96; 4:07:58 PM URL: http://www.gactr.uga.edu/GCQ/gcqsum95/wuga.html