TALLRED said:
As far as I know, there has not been a simulcast between the two. I've occasionaly listened to WKGA from the time they were on 97.3, 100.3 and when they moved to 97.5, and I've never heard any mention of 97.7 in thomaston. I do think Great South needs to stop all the musical chairs theme and leave some of the stations as is for a while. I recently found out that WKLD in Oneonta was sold to these nutshells and I found out that they are fixing to move the station to some area in Marshall County leaving Blount County w/o an FM station for the first ime in 40 years. Talk about a shame.
Travis
It's a shame, but unfortunately these stations want to move closer (and market themsevles) to larger cities. It's all about money, of course, and you can't really blame these media conglomerates from wanting to do such. However, it's definitely a negative for these areas which lose their local station to one of the larger cities. It's an ongoing process that's been taking place for 20 years on more. Here in Birmingham, we've seen several FMs increase their power and/or move their xmtrs closer to Birmingham. Some of these include Jasper's WWWB-FM (now WDXB), Tuscaloosa's WFFX (now WBHJ), Gadsden's WQEN (now licensed to Trussville) and Cullman's WFMH-FM (now WYDE-FM). All four of those stations were already class C or C1's before the move, but in the last few years we've started to see smaller, class A stations attempt this same feat of trying to get themselves into a larger market. Some of these include Clanton's WEZZ-FM (now WHPH, and marketing itself more as a "southern Birmingham suburb station" and has a CP to increase to a class C3), Cordova's WFFN (now licensed to Coaling, serving Tuscaloosa), Sylacauga's WTRB-FM (now licensed to Ashland and serving Anniston as WTXO) and soon WKLD Oneonta, being relicensed to Union Grove, just south of Huntsville. I remember growing up I used to listen to some of these smaller class A stations, and they were always fun to listen to because of the different feel you would get from them than listening to the big Birmingham FM's. Some of these class A's I remember listening to were WEZZ-FM, WFFN, WAWV "98 Wave" (now WTXO), WKLD, and later, Dadeville's WZLM and WSSY-FM in Talladega (now WGZZ and WKGA, respectively). A side note: I remember reading from one of your earlier posts where you said that you live somewhere around Cullman county. I wouldn't be surprised at all if WKUL there in Cullman tries to "pull stakes" and move into Huntsville one of these days. Some of the smaller class A's wanting upgrades in the past, however, were close enough to a larger city, such as Birmingham, and just wanted to improve coverage, such as WODL in Homewood (now, WNCB, relicensed to Gardendale as a C2), WENN in Trussville (now WVVB and licensed to Hoover as a C2), and WLBI in Warrior (now WBHK, a C1). I don't have as much a problem with those stations wanting to upgrade because they were prevously getting their signals into parts of Birmingham, anyhow.
The only two class A's I can think of (at least around Birmingham) which haven't tried to increase their powers and/or move their xmtrs to better cover the metro area are WQEM in Columbiana and WXJC-FM in Dora. I don't recall ever seeing any type of application to increase WQEM's signal in the Birmingham area when Clear Channel owned it and was simulcasting the station with WQEN. Once Clear Channel sold WQEM to Glen Iris Baptist, it went to a full-time simulcast of WGIB, and it appears the folks at Glen Iris don't have any plans on upgrading the station's power. I do wish, though, Glen Iris would try to put separate programming on WQEM, such as a southern gospel or contemporary christian format, or even a mix of music and preaching, just anything besides that simulcast of WGIB, which IMO is a waste of frequency, and could be used for other purposes for furthering the gospel. As far as WXJC-FM (and its predecessors)... the station has always tried to market itself to Birmingham and has miserably done so. Being a class A and the xmtr being located in Walker County, it's just not going to have any type of meaningful impact on the Birmingham market. It's had numerous formats over the years, as "Planet Rock" and for a while was owned by the folks at EWTN, as a Catholic station. Crawford, after buying the station several years ago, has put several formats on that frequency, also to no avail. I believe that, as someone on the board commenting about WXJC several months ago described it, it would be better if Crawford quit trying to market the station to Birmingham and have it serve Walker County instead (not gonna happen, as long as Crawford owns it) where the signal is much better, or swap the station with Glen Iris' WQEM and pair-off the stations together...WQEM with WYDE-FM and WGIB with WXJC-FM.
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