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Birmingham Something afoot at WXJC 850 and WYDE 1260?

passtheword

passtheword

Is there something afoot with WXJC 850 and WYDE 1260? A week or so ago, Crawford Media filed to swap the originating stations for their two FM translators (see link below from my earlier post).

radiodiscussions.com

Birmingham - Crawford Media swaps primary stations on Bham FM translators

Crawford Media filed a change in primary station for both W237EK at 95.3 and W245CS at 96.9. W237EK will rebroadcast WXJC 850 while W245CS will air WYDE 1260. I'm too far away from either translator to determine if the swap has taken place. I did check the TOH IDs on the online broadcasts for...
radiodiscussions.com radiodiscussions.com

WYDE-AM has been operating with a dead carrier for several days. Today, I am not receiving any signal on 1260 here in south Shelby county. I normally receive some semblance of a signal from WYDE, however. Also of note...I checked a few mobile apps and neither the WXJC or WYDE audio will connect, even though both of these were active as late as a few days ago. I also checked the WXJC and WYDE websites and neither station's audio is connecting and both of these were functional on the website not long ago. WXJC 850 is still on the air but in the past two hours, I am no longer hearing a TOH ID as has been given in the past. With today being the first day/part of the month, a period when many AM/FM format changes take place, could this be indicative of another Crawford Media "swap-a-roo" with their call signs and formats that they do every few years? Nothing on fccdata.org regarding call sign change requests for either 850 or 1260 and it could be just a coincidence both stations' are not broadcasting online. A lot going on there, however...
 
This is very vague:

Justification forRequest for Silent Authority of an AM StationWYDE • Birmingham ALFacility ID #34822Kimtron, Inc., licensee of AM station WYDE, Birmingham, AL (Facility ID #34822) herebyrequests silent authority for that station. We will, during the time the station is silent, seekviable and sustainable programming and sales options for the station.

Do that still have a tower for the FM?
 
These are some very quirky radio stations. I seem to remember 1260 WYDE tried going all-digital for a while. The two stations, 1260 and 92.5, had been simulcasting a mix of conservative talk and Christian preachers, who I assume paid for their airtime. Crawford Broadcasting also owns 850 and 101.1 WXJC, which I think are all brokered Christian, along with WDJC 93.7 which is commercially-supported Christian Contemporary.

Crawford doesn't subscribe to Nielsen so we don't know how the stations' ratings are. I thought at one time WDJC-FM had been rated fairly well.

BTW, there's a quirk in the ratings for K-Love and Air 1. Birmingham's K-Love station, WKVV 97.3, doesn't show in the ratings. K-Love is also carried on the HD3 subchannel of WMJJ, and that has the lowest ratings of any station in Birmingham. Air 1 is carried by a translator fed by WZZK-FM-HD2, which barely gets a fraction of 1.

A K-Love station in distant Carbon Hill, AL also gets a fraction of a 1. And that station has call letters beginning with K, even though it's in Alabama, more than a thousand miles east of the Mississippi River, 89.7 KRLE.

Maybe EMF is interested in WYDE-FM, considering how religious Birmingham is? If you believe these ratings, EMF gets almost no traction for K-Love or Air 1 in Birmingham.
 
The low ratings that are showing for K-Love are from the time the station was on 96.1/WMJJ HD3. Why the more recent numbers don't reflect the new WKVV at 97.3 which is a C2, given 97.3 changed to K-Love last September? I imagine at some point the Bham ratings will show WKVV with higher ratings.

As far as WYDE-FM 92.5, I doubt K-Love wouid want it, a class A that barely puts a decent signal in NW Jefferson county. After 92.5 first came on the air, it was a CHR and later programmed Rock (as Planet Rock). It was sold to a Catholic group.and the station was re-christened WQOP-FM with Catholic programming. They didn't own it for long before Crawford bought it and it has had numerous call signs and formats since that time. 92.5 was one of those allocations from the 80-90 docket from the late 80s and was originally licensed to Dora.
 
passtheword said:
The low ratings that are showing for K-Love are from the time the station was on 96.1/WMJJ HD3. Why the more recent numbers don't reflect the new WKVV at 97.3 which is a C2, given 97.3 changed to K-Love last September? I imagine at some point the Bham ratings will show WKVV with higher ratings.

As far as WYDE-FM 92.5, I doubt K-Love wouid want it, a class A that barely puts a decent signal in NW Jefferson county. After 92.5 first came on the air, it was a CHR and later programmed Rock (as Planet Rock). It was sold to a Catholic group.and the station was re-christened WQOP-FM with Catholic programming. They didn't own it for long before Crawford bought it and it has had numerous call signs and formats since that time. 92.5 was one of those allocations from the 80-90 docket from the late 80s and was originally licensed to Dora.
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what if k-love/air1 are not interested?, the different company might want that frequency
 
I doubt Crawford would want to sell WYDE-FM to K-Love, with 92.5 being a future competitor with WDJC (not that 92.5 would pose any kind of meaningful threat to 93.7, anyway). Unless 92.5 could be upgraded (which is doubtful without some facility changes of current stations on co-channel and adjacent frequencies), hardly anyone would really want it, at least as a Birmingham station.
 
passtheword said:
I doubt Crawford would want to sell WYDE-FM to K-Love, with 92.5 being a future competitor with WDJC (not that 92.5 would pose any kind of meaningful threat to 93.7, anyway). Unless 92.5 could be upgraded (which is doubtful without some facility changes of current stations on co-channel and adjacent frequencies), hardly anyone would really want it, at least as a Birmingham station.
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k-love already have 97.3 (mainly) in birmingham and 89.7 in Jasper, why would Crawford want to sell that frequency to them?
 
BarryATL said:
Do that still have a tower for the FM?
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I'm sure that they own it and the land, it's just that it's in the absolute middle of nowhere and covers nothing but pine trees and cows. I've been to the tower back when Crawford first bought it and it's just not a good location. I seem to recall that the signal doesn't really cover Jasper well enough to be considered a local there, and of course by the time you reach Birmingham proper it's kind of a noisy mess. The northwest suburbs along US-78 and I-22 just aren't any kind of growth zone that a small scrappy station could sell to, either.

Gregg. said:
A K-Love station in distant Carbon Hill, AL also gets a fraction of a 1. And that station has call letters beginning with K, even though it's in Alabama, more than a thousand miles east of the Mississippi River, 89.7 KRLE.
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I know it's off-topic of the thread but I've always wondered why the FCC suddenly started issuing K-calls east of the Mississippi. I know KRLE was a move-in from Kansas (!) but it's not the only one anymore. There's KJMS licensed to Olive Branch, MS which is a 100 kW station serving the Memphis market; the tower is north of Memphis but still east of the river. There's KWUS-LP in Clarksville, Tennessee, KUMB in Hollywood, MS, KYAI in Manchester, KY and then two in Michigan, KTGG and KDTI.

I assume KJMS was moved in from Arkansas at some point, but KWUS and KUMB were both new constructions as far as I know…
 
tomservo said:
I know it's off-topic of the thread but I've always wondered why the FCC suddenly started issuing K-calls east of the Mississippi. I know KRLE was a move-in from Kansas (!) but it's not the only one anymore. There's KJMS licensed to Olive Branch, MS which is a 100 kW station serving the Memphis market; the tower is north of Memphis but still east of the river. There's KWUS-LP in Clarksville, Tennessee, KUMB in Hollywood, MS, KYAI in Manchester, KY and then two in Michigan, KTGG and KDTI.

I assume KJMS was moved in from Arkansas at some point, but KWUS and KUMB were both new constructions as far as I know…
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Not sure about KJMS, but its original sister station, KWAM 990, moved to Memphis from West Memphis, AR, where it was originally known as KWEM for "WEst Memphis." KTGG in Michigan was a clerical error at the FCC, or so I'd always heard; when call letters were still manually assigned, someone at the call letter desk mistook the "MI" for Missouri. Seems like the FCC was always a little more lax on call letters around Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
 
Kent said:
Seems like the FCC was always a little more lax on call letters around Memphis, St. Louis, New Orleans, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
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Actually, as far as St. Louis was concerned, the FCC was very strict about it until Doubleday challenged the denial of its application for the KWK-FM call letters on its station licensed to Granite City, Illinois, purchased in 1979, to match the call letters for its AM simulcast on KWK, licensed to St. Louis. So the FM went by WWWK, and Doubleday went to court. Doubleday won, with an appeals court calling the FCC's actions arbitrary and capricious. Thus WWWK became KWK-FM in July 1981. Similarly, when Laclede Radio (KATZ) created an AM-FM combo by buying WOKZ-FM in Alton, Illinois at the end of 1978, the Alton calls became WZEN. But Laclede chose not to fight, while Doubleday did.

Apologies for this diversion, but I happened to see this and felt some context was needed.
 
tomservo said:
I know it's off-topic of the thread but I've always wondered why the FCC suddenly started issuing K-calls east of the Mississippi. I know KRLE was a move-in from Kansas (!) but it's not the only one anymore. There's KJMS licensed to Olive Branch, MS which is a 100 kW station serving the Memphis market; the tower is north of Memphis but still east of the river. There's KWUS-LP in Clarksville, Tennessee, KUMB in Hollywood, MS, KYAI in Manchester, KY and then two in Michigan, KTGG and KDTI.

I assume KJMS was moved in from Arkansas at some point, but KWUS and KUMB were both new constructions as far as I know…
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In markets that straddle the Mississippi there are K and W call signs on both sides of the river. Mark Roberts cites the KWK dispute from the 1970s where the FCC was stubborn. But these days the FCC grants plenty of K and W call signs in those "straddle" markets: St. Louis, Quad Cities, Memphis, it's a long list. Same for the two states, Minnesota and Louisiana, through which the Mississippi flows in the center. You find both K and W call signs even in a market like Duluth-Superior, hundreds of miles east of the river, because Duluth is in Minnesota.

Originally there were only four K call signs in the East, away from the "straddle" cities and states: KDKA and KQV Pittsburgh, KYW Philadelphia and KFIZ Fond du Lac. But now there are more than a dozen Christian stations from EMF and an Hispanic broadcaster, that applied for licenses in the West and later moved them to the East, keeping their K call letters. That includes KRLE near Birmingham.

Check out Thomas H. White's webpage:

 
As a matter of fact, yes there is, or should that be, there are.
Silent Notifications
▪ Crawford Broadcasting’s 1260 WYDE Birmingham AL (Seeking viable sales/programming options)
▪ Crawford Broadcasting’s 92.5 WYDE-FM Cullman AL (Seeking viable sales/programming options
radioinsight.com

FCC Report 3/8: FCC To Vote On Series Of Rule Adjustments

FCC Actions At its March Open Meeting, the FCC intends to vote on the removal of a number "outdated procedures"
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
 
RoseCatkw_21 said:
I'm I tripping, did Radio Locator actually removed WYDE both AM 1260 and FM 92.5?
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Yes, because theyre silent and radio locator doesnt list silent stations
 


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