WGAU

WGAU (1340 AM, "News-Talk 1340") is a radio station licensed to serve Athens, Georgia, United States, that broadcasts a news/talk format. The station is owned by Cox Media Group. The transmitter is located at the studios (with WNGC) in Five Points. WGAU began broadcasting on May 1, 1938. In 1948, WGAU put WGAU-FM on the air. It was purchased in 1956 by Clarke Broadcasting Company, owned by H. Randolph Holder and Tom Lloyd, two broadcasters who also owned WLAQ in Rome, Georgia, and WGRI in Griffin, Georgia. Holder was a popular Athens newsman whose morning and midday news commentaries had a wide following. The station has played many different musical formats before switching to the current format of news and talk in the early 1990s. Over the years, it served as a launching pad for a number of successful broadcasters who worked at WGAU during their student days at the Henry Grady College of Journalism at the nearby University of Georgia: Harry Chapman, later with WTVF in Nashville, Tennessee, and Bruce Bartley, the lead newscaster of Atlanta's WSB Radio. Former WGAU news director John Holliman went on to be a news reporter for CNN. He rose to prominence as one of CNN's "Boys of Baghdad" during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 and was one of only three journalists reporting fr... ()