The Whateley Academy Radio Station (abbreviated WARS) is the voice of Whateley Academy through the 'Paranormal Academy Project'. It first appeared in the 2nd chapter of Insanity Prerequisite.[1] Note that references to the station having a subspace transmitter seem to have been retconned out by the story Wednesday Morning, 5AM[2].
History[]
The Whateley Academy Radio Station got its start as a series of pirate broadcasts from a partnership of two students, Matt and Greg, who were caught up in the ‘radio craze’ of the seventies. It was a time of revival of radio in general, CB in particular and HAM radio along with low power stations, all vying to get their version of the ‘truth’ out on the airwaves. The students were captured, red handed, by the House Father of Twain Cottage at the time, the retired adventurer and civil rights activist Cliff ‘Midnight’ Maxwell.
After reading the students the riot act for potentially getting the school into mountains of trouble with the FCC, Cliff allowed himself to be swayed by their arguments and set up a meeting of the original radios station steering committee, a joint venture between the Advanced Technologies department and the English department for its ability to teach public speaking, ‘drama’ and as a way to offer students a career path other than superhero or super villain. Cliff appointed himself the first programming director and with the help of Jack ‘Gizmo’ Duncan, for the AT Department and Liz ‘Ms. Might’ Stevens for the English Department. Together the three teachers and four students assembled a very professional proposal and submitted it to Dr. Alexander.
The proposal outlined the benefits to the school in terms of positive PR, of putting a ‘face’ on the so-called mutant menace to help humanity realize that mutants were not as great a threat to them as surmised. It would also supply a revenue stream to the school in terms of advertising dollars and buy the school some positive feeling from the locals.
Dr. Alexander considered the proposal for nearly an hour before rejecting the first draft.
Sill the steering committee refused to give up and eventually W.A.R.S was chartered through the FCC as a Class ‘D’ Campus Radio station broadcasting at 10 watts on 105.7FM. However, there was a large collection of extra equipment that other campus systems wouldn’t need. For a starter, a talisman was created by Circe and embedded into the microphone that would keep the DJs from accidentally mixing code and real names to allow someone to put together who a person really was. This worked automatically without the DJ having to use the dump button. DJs could speak freely, without fear of a slip of the tongue.
Further, Gizmo put together a device that would allow DJs to speak freely, addressing local items and landmarks, but out the W.A.R.S. feed would go replacement names for the local items, such as Berlin, that would keep the school from being traced. In fact, these names change every fifty miles or so, so that trying to trace the school through them, or trying to figure out what they avoid, would be practically impossible.
Organization[]
The Faculty Sponsor of WARS is Ms. Hartford, although this is a very hands off arrangement. The students do most of the work, most of all by Zenith who is the Program Director as well as working a talk show entitled The Voice of Reason.
Schedule[]
| Time Slot | Show Title |
|---|---|
| 5:30AM | Broadcast Day begins The Morning Wake-up Show with Dr. Goodvibes and Bert the Robot. |
| 6:00AM | The Morning Rock Out 53 minutes of songs with a single commercial break in the middle |
| 7:00AM | The Morning Wake-up Show with Dr. Goodvibes and Bert the Robot. |
| 9:00AM | The Voice of Reason with Zenith |
| 11:00AM | The Peeper and Greasy Show with Peeper and Greasy, until 2007-10-31, where they are now "former W.A.R.S. Personalities".[3] |
| Before 12:00AM | Thuban's The Dragon's Den, as of 2007-10-31 or earlier.[3] |