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Jeff Beck Broadcast Group - Anniston & Gadsden

A

AlabamaRadioHound

Does anyone know what is up with The Jeff Beck Broadcast Group? I heard the company is in bad shape. A friend told me the owner has caused 25+ employees to walk away in the past year alone.

Their station in Anniston 1490 WFZX-AM (formerly WANA-AM) has been off air for several months but they continue to run the classic hits format "The Fox" on their FM translators (99.1 & 104.3) in Oxford despite the AM being down.

Also their Gadsden station 1350 WTDR-AM (formerly WGAD-AM) is missing a tower. I heard it's been on the ground for over a year and a half. They applied for an extension last fall but the deadline came and went, without a fix.

Heard they flipped 930 WJBY-AM from gospel to AC and changed the call letters to WGAD-AM. Didn't that happen a few years ago, before flipping it back?

Anyone over in that part of the state know anything about this?
 
Your friend is right, except its actually 30+ employees. The bottom line is that I'd say Beck is a scumbag, but that would be an insult to scumbags.
 
Thanks for your input. Although it is appreciated, I did not question his character. If everything I mentioned is true, I think that speaks for itself. I’m just curious if the format/call letter change and the possible FCC violations are true. As far as I know, if everything I asked about is correct, there would be some clear violations, unless the rules have changed.
 
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Well, I do know that you're not supposed to run the FM translator if the AM is off without some sort of STA. But stations do it all the time, apparently, like WJLX in Jasper. This is the first I've heard about 1490 being off, though.
 
It was the strangest thing. For a short period of time at the end of April it was playing unedited gangster rap while the FM was playing the right programming and then it just went dark. It's been dark since the beginning of May. The only thing that you can hear is the bleedover from DNG
 
Sorry this is off topic. Chris, just wanted to say congrats on the move to the new tower sight & I love the "pass the test to enter the website" thing. LOL hilarious!
 
Thanks! We've been having nightmare issues at the new site but hopefully that's almost done. Can you believe that in the first 4 weeks we have had two power outages because of people running into power poles?
 
LOL I swear people can't drive. I hope all the issues will soon be behind you though! I look forward to checking out the new signal next time I'm in Gadsden! I haven't even been able to check it out yet. It's been a while since I've been down that way.
 
He doesn't believe in titles. He hired me for a job he had already promised to someone else. So, I started to work and on the same day was told not to come back via text.
 
I could only hope that these claims are untrue, but it appears that several people have stepped up to verify what's happened in that cluster.

Reading reports such as this shake me to the core. I have known far too many "men" in leadership positions who completely lack integrity.

What is integrity? Acting like someone your father would be proud of. Obeying the law. Treating others as you'd want them to treat you. Being honest in your dealings with people.

In my book, if you don't have integrity then you are not a man. It's one of the simplest virtues there is. Forget the implications of all of this on the radio market in northeast Alabama. If you don't have integrity then you really don't have anything in this life.

Seeing a man fail to act with integrity is a shame. But it's an injustice when other people have to suffer because of it. Here's hoping these reports are either false, or that better days are ahead for everyone in that radio group.
 
Glad I checked this site before applying for a job

If Beck has lost more than 30 employees, then he isn't just a scumbag as someone on here has stated, he's a cheap scumbag. On the primetime shift from 8:00 pm to midnight, he has some guy working who has obviously never worked in radio before. He has no voice for the job and has the personality of a house plant. He routinely walks all over the beginning of songs and rambles on and on about crap no one listening to the station really cares about.

I started working in radio in 1982, but I've been out of the business for quite a few years. I know from experience to keep your breaks short and to try to engage listeners as much as possible.

Most of the other shifts must be on auto pilot, because I've only heard, maybe, two or three radio personalities on air. Most of the ads, with the exceptions of, possibly, two ads are mostly PSA's. I have to wonder how this station is paying it's bills and it's staff.
 
I'll tell you what I've found more interesting about Beck's Thunder 92.7 since moving to Birmingham last year. They come in *very* loud and *very* clear over here. The 100,000-watt boomers just a few miles away on Red Mountain don't even sound as clear as Thunder does down in the Altadena Valley north of Double Oak Mountain. I've also noticed on trips to northeast Alabama that, through at least Albertville, Thunder is completely steamrolling over the signal of WAFN "Fun 92.7" out of Arab. It's really not until you get into Guntersville proper that you can pick up WAFN. And WAFN has their tower situated at a high point of Brindley Mountain to give them city-grade signal through Boaz! Yet in the past two or three years I've seen more advertising on Sand Mountain for Thunder on the 92.7 frequency than I've seen in Oxford or Anniston.

This is the kind of thing that only stands to get worse nationally as the FCC starts closing field offices in the months ahead.
 
whit979 said:
This is the kind of thing that only stands to get worse nationally as the FCC starts closing field offices in the months ahead.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a very disturbing trend, especially in light of the illegalities that went on with the new owners of WFHK and their translator recently. That stuff will only get worse if enforcement is lax enough.

Not being able to hear the situation with 92.7 myself, it's hard to draw a conclusive determination on the issue, but it certainly sounds like Beck's Thunder might be playing shenanigans with the power. That wouldn't surprise me, to be perfectly honest. It could be on purpose or just ignorance, who really knows. OR it could be just atmospherics. Thunder's antenna is actually higher up than Fun's and if I remember correctly is facing north which would maximize radiation in that direction. Gadsden's actually almost wholly in the moderate coverage area of Thunder according to Radio-Dislocator, but it's also in Fun's fringe so I would expect there to be a little fighting between the two when conditions are frisky.

If Fun is losing coverage they had before, they should definitely complain about it. That's the only way to get anything fixed these days.
 
The reason you are hearing more Ad's for the Sand Mountain area is because the audio from 92.7 is simulcast on 1350 AM, which in turn is translated on 99.3FM to the greater Gadsden area.
 
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