— Asymmetrical operation: 2% on upper sideband, 5%
on lower sideband (Experimental
STA)
:PS-GEORGIA PUBLIC BROADCASTING WJSP FM 88.1
Time-unknown
Text-unknown
PTY-Pubic
PI-WFOH-FM
[Facebook] GPB Media page
[Picture] Image showing the HD PAD data decoded from a brief moment of reception from Baldwin County, Alabama, on an Insignia HD portable.
State Government of Georgia Radio. Formerly Peach State Public Radio. Poor signal in the Atlanta area. Signal was once supplemented with a 10-watt translator at FM 100.7.
Georgia Peach State Public Radio is largely ignored in metro Atlanta where non-commercial NPR/PRI affiliate WABE-FM dominates. The primary audience is outside the metro-Atlanta area. Peach State tried unsucessfully in the mid/latter '80s to acquire licenses of some student-run, non-commercial stations at state supported schools.
Both Peach State and Georgia Public TV are divisions of state-run Georgia Public Broadcasting. GPTV broadcasts to the Atlanta area from its Athens station, WGTV Channel 8. Programming for the tv and radio networks originates from state-of-the-art digital studios in Atlanta. The facilities were almost nixed by state legislators after GPTV broadcast the PBS series "Tales of the City" in the early/mid '90s. In the aftermath of that broadcast, the then executive director was forced to retire and a new director was appointed before the legislators would approve funding for the new $30 million studios. The studios are part of the new GCATT complex on 14th Street in urban Atlanta. When GPB moved to the GCATT complex in 1997, then Executive Director Werner Rodgers said of the facility, "It is the most technically advanced public television and radio facility in the nation and the first fully digital production center - public or commercial - in Georgia."
In the late '90s, GPB was heavily in debt because of unbridled spending on office furnishings and high-tech equipment. One if its snafoos involved a $801,740 contract awarded without competitive bidding to a private firm to develop and run a satellite delivered class to 106 students. In late spring 1999, Governor Barnes fired GPB Executive Director Werner Rogers and the board of directors of the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission, the policy-making board that oversees GPB. He appointed Kim King, a former Georgia Tech football player, as new head of the GPTC. Before the firings, the Augusta Chronicle wrote, "The (just completed state) audit makes clear that GPB's soaring deficits have much more to do with slipshod and possibly corrupt management than it does with state funding shortages and ungenerous GPTV viewers."
In summer of '99, Peach State discontinued "Adventures in Good Music" with Carl Haas and the NPR program "World of Opera" as a cost cutting moves. A program featuring the music and folklore of "singing cowboys" replaced the opera.
This station dates back to an original construction permit issued to the Georgia Public Telecommunications Commission in August of 1983. After several construction permit extensions, it finally filed a license to cover in September of 1985, broadcasting from the current transmitter site with 100 kW ERP at 1,000 feet Height Above Average Terrain.
During work for the digital TV switchover (for WJSP-TV) In the summer of 2008, the station changed antennas from a Jampro JSCP-9 circularly polarized model to a Dielectric DCRC10CHVH model, and in the process raised the overall antenna to 1,368 feet Height Above Average Terrain. To maintain the same coverage area as before, the power was lowered to 42 kW ERP. In November of that same year, they began operating in the IBOC HD hybrid digital transmission scheme.
The station returned to full 100 kW ERP operation in the fall of 2012, by employing a new custom directional antenna. In 2013 the station began operating under an Experimental Special Temporary Authority (STA) to use asymmetrical power on the HD sidebands. One sideband is higher powered than the other, to overcome terrain shadowing issues with the lower-powered digital signal. That permit was adjusted and re-affirmed from time to time, as recently as May of 2020.