AM Technical Profile: WCMA

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Frequency:

1560

Format:

Southern Gospel

Transmitter Location:

[map] [street view: studio, tower] Just east of the intersection of Mark Donnell Road and Dale County 102, about a mile south of Level Plains.

Power (ERP):

Day: 50 kW

Critical Hours: 2.5 kW

Night: 6 watts (CP)

Antenna:

1 tower / omnidirectional

Other Information:

[FCC]

[Radio-Locator]

[Wikipedia]

Owned by Perihelion Global, run by T.O.P.S. in a local marketing agreement (LMA).

History:

This station traces it roots back to Samson in Geneva County, as WRDJ on 1490 kHz.  The station moved to 1350 kHz and moved up to Daleville in the mid 80's. Later they moved down the dial to 1560 kHz. After being sold several times, the station eventually picked up a talk format.

 

The station was bought by a company called "News Talk 1560" in 1992, running 5kW days, 2500 watts during critical hours and 50 watts pre- and post-sunset. (The 50 watt transmitter once served all day when the main transmitter was taken out by a leaky roof!) "News Talk 1560" was composed of station manager Wyatt Cox, Tom Holter and Herb Kraft as CEO.   The calls changed to WTKN (now We're TalKiN') due to confusion between the WRDJ calls and area-FM WDJR.  The station enjoyed a strong audience, but went dark due to being underfunded in 1993.

 

The station was LMA'd and eventually transferred again, coming under John H Beebe's ownership in 1997.  Under Beebe the station got a permit to increase power from 5 kW days only to 50 kW days, 2500 watts critical hours.  That facility probably came on around spring 2005.  The calls changed to WCMA in February 2005.  After the upgrade signed on the station was reported to be running a classic country format, but fell silent sometime thereafter.  The station was reported back on the air in March 2009 with a southern gospel/religious format.

 

The station's license was cancelled in January, 2011.  Prior to cancellation, the station applied for and was denied another STA to stay off the air while building out their construction permit.