WCHL 1360 Chapel Hill

[kg4qwr]

Good afternoon all!
I have a question for you regulars on the board. Coming June 5, I am launching a program here in Lynchburg, VA to highlight musicians of varied genres (jazz, folk, pop, acoustic, etc.) in the local and regional area. I am also highlighting musicians from the Triangle and Triad. I'd like to expand my program in the future to have a signal in those areas. Is anyone here familiar with WCHL 1360 in Chapel Hill? I'm curious as to how good its signal is and a little history on the station and its management. Since I'm out of the area, I'm slightly unfamiliar with many of the AM stations. Any help would be appreciated.

Jay Daniels

 

[vchimpanzee]

The big news about WCHL is it's the flagship station for UNC-Chapel Hill. Football, men's basketball, and even women's basketball and baseball. It was a community-oriented station at one time, but I've read complaints in recent years that they abandoned that.

I've heard different opinions on the strength of WCHL.

A few years ago they were playing a mix of standards and oldies and I would listen from time to time. I'm close to Charlotte so it was pretty remarkable that I could pick them up this far away, with only 5000 watts. But I haven't been able to pick up WCHL lately.

Sometimes I would hear WCHL at night instead of WSAI. Even though it's 1000 watts compared to 5000 24 hours for WSAI.

I don't remember precisely when WCHL went all-talk, but Barry Saunders wrote about it for the News & Observer. He's a smart-aleck African-American who thinks everything is about race and every slight against his people is racism, but quite entertaining. I was surprised to hear he liked this station so much, but when they switched, he was told he was the only one. I'm not really surprised because half the time they had sports talk programming or UNC sports, and if you're going to play music, you need to commit to that music.

At one time there was general talk on WCHL, and then they joined Air America.

Before oldies and standards I don't remember. It may have been talk, but there was also a lot of emphasis on the community.

 

[RadioDaze]

WCHL was reportedly top 40 at one time and, by the 1980s, was a mix of adult contemporary and news with some talk and a strong community focus and UNC sports, but replaced the AC with talk by the mid-1990s. They were owned by Village Companies (their current owner) from their 1953 sign on until 1997 when Curtis Media bought the station. It was in late 1997 the talk was scrapped in favor of a music format best described as MOR. They also were moved to Durham with then-sister station WDNC 620. The UNC sports focus continued, as it still does, but the local news and community focus diminished during this time. The station moved back to CHapel Hill by its 50th anniversary in 2003 and Village Companies (now VilComm) bought the station again shortly thereafter and returned it to a community-focused talk format and enhanced local news coverage. The liberal talk format was worked into the equation in 2004 as Air America came online.

As for their signal, their 5 kW non-directional day covers CHapel Hill/Carrboro and environs pretty well and is better than average in Durham, though not so much in Raleigh as the harmonic from 50kW WPTF eats up their 1360 signal there. At night, they're 1kW directional to the southeast and can be hard to hear outside of Chapel Hill and southwest Durham.