Technical Profile: KRLE

FM Technical Profile: KRLE

Station Name:: K-Love
Frequency:: 89.7
Format:: Christian Contemporary
Transmitter Location:: [map] Northwest of the Eldrige community in Walker County, between old US-78 and Corridor X, at the end of Farris Road.
Power (ERP):: 79 kW vertical / 1 watt horizontal
Antenna:: Directional
Antenna HAAT:: 289 feet
Other Information:: 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.
:
PS-(song/artist) K~Love
Time-[?]
Text-(song/artist) K~Love
PTY-Adult Hits
PI-KRLE-FM
More Information:: [FCC]; [FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia] Wiki link to the K-Love network page
[Facebook] Facebook for the K-Love network
[Image] RDS display image from an Insignia portable radio showing the PI (call sign) and Text data fields decoded from Florence, Alabama.
Owner:: Educational Media Foundation
History:: This station originated as an allocation to Oberlin, Kansas in 2006, on 91.3 MHz. The permit was won by a company called Salt & Light Communications, which appears to be a shell of American Family Association. AFA got the station in their name shortly after the permit was granted. The original call sign was KOEN.

AFA swapped the station to Educational Media Foundation in March of 2007, and they changed the calls to KRLE and likely flipped the format to Contemporary Christian "K-Love" at that time. The company applied for a rare major modification to this humble, low powered facility in 2009, which would see it move from Kansas to Carbon Hill, and change frequencies to 89.7 MHz, while boosting power from under 300 watts to 79,000 watts. The Carbon Hill facility was put on the air in the late fall of 2012, still carrying the K-Love network programming.

This is officially Alabama's only station to start with a K-call sign. In November 2013 they acquired a translator in Vance, halfway between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. It was only temporary, as that translator was re-purposed for a commercial format by a Tuscaloosa-area station in 2015.