Georgia Tech was the home of an early AM radio station, WBBF (later WGST, now
WGKA AM 920), which began operation in January 1924. Much of this station's initial equipment had been previously used by the ''Atlanta Constitution's''
WGM, and was donated through the efforts of the newspaper's editor,
Clark Howell. In April 1930, the school made an agreement with the Southern Broadcasting Stations, Inc. to operate WGST as a commercial station, while still under the oversight of Georgia Tech. In 1973, the Georgia Board of Regents decided WGST was "surplus property", and the next year it was sold for five million dollars to the
Meredith Corporation, despite opposition from
alumni groups, members of the
Georgia General Assembly and even the
Governor of Georgia. Proceeds from this sale were used to upgrade WREK. WREK first signed on the air on March 25, 1968, broadcasting at 10 Watts from a 20-foot tower atop the
Van Leer Electrical Engineering building on
Georgia Tech's campus. Barry James Folsom, then-student, started radio station WREK and was one of first DJs. The
studio was located in the top floor of that building and included donated equipment from
WSM-FM Nashville. Chief Engineer and then-student Geoff Mendenhall designed and built a 425W power amplifier which, once type certified by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in August 1968, brought WREK to 3,400W
ERP. In 2013 Mendenhall retired from Harris Broadcast Communications (now GatesAir) as VP of Transmission Research and Technology. In 1978 WREK's tower and studio were relocated. A new, tower was built on the western edge of the Georgia Tech campus, and the studio moved to the former WGST studios in the annex of the
Alexander Memorial Coliseum (now known as Hank McCamish Pavilion), where it would remain until 2004. Visitors to WREK's Coliseum studios were often startled by its walls, which were covered by thick layers of posters, set lists, and other music
memorabilia, as well as the giant
electromechanical broadcast automation machines and other large racks of monitoring and control equipment. WREK's studios relocated to the Student Center Commons (formerly the Georgia Tech Bookstore building) in August 2004. The station now streams in
MP3 format and features a two-week-long running archive of its broadcast on the schedule page of its website. In December 2002, WREK broadcast the entire 50-disc
Merzbox by the Japanese
experimental music artist
Merzbow. An article in
Creative Loafing described the Merzbow Marathon as "what may be the most obscure and counterintuitive move in the history of radio." Continuing their tradition of unorthodox radio broadcasts, WREK chose to air the long-running heavy metal show
WREKage for the entire 24-hour broadcast day on June 6, 2006 (6/6/6). Heavy metal was played in chronological order from midnight to midnight. As an extra nod to the mystic number
666 (number),
Iron Maidens
The Number of the Beast was aired at 6:06 a.m. and p.m. In the fall of 2007, the critics of
Creative Loafing declared WREK to be the Best Overall Radio Station in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The article describing their reasoning declared WREK to be "strange in a good way. The station's format is noncommercial and nonconforming. Few stations in the city can compete with WREK's eclectic playlist". ==See also==