Technical Profile: WCOC

AM Technical Profile: WCOC

Frequency:: 1010
Format:: Spanish
Transmitter Location:: [map] [bird's eye] [street view: studio only] Just west of US 78 near Sumiton. Tower is on opposite side of highway, across the Old Bankhead Highway.
Power (ERP):: Day: 5 kW; Night: 41 watts
Antenna:: 1 tower
Other Information:: [FCC]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]; [Aircheck] Top of the hour legal ID from May 2013. (11 seconds, 104 KB); [Aircheck] Short sample of music, from May 2013. (50 seconds, 408 KB); [Aircheck] Quick prayer after legal ID, from May 2013. (28 seconds, 236 KB)
History:: Details of the early days of this station are sketchy; it was likely some type of classic or contemporary country early on. The station came on the air in 1982 with the WPYK calls, owned by a company called Mid-Way Radio (a reference to being halfway between Jasper and Birmingham?) That lasted less than a year, probably due to the fact the day signal was almost non-existent in Birmingham and there was no night power at the time at all. Station ownership passed from Mid-Way to JASCO (James O. Powell) to Earl Fisher in around the fall of 1987. That year the station attempted to target Birmingham with an AOR format, going as "K-Rock", but it was short lived due to the weak signal in the metro and no nighttime operation at all. Later, the station went country and tried to target and move COL to Gardendale with 10 kW, but that was unsuccessful. They even briefly changed calls to WDLE (gardenDaLE) from the fall of '87 to the late spring of '88 IDing as a Gardendale station despite not being authorized to do so. They went back to the WPYK calls the next summer. Ownership fell into more hands after the failed Gardendale experiment: from Fisher to Casey & Perkins Broadcasting to Paul Tate Johnson in 1990. Johnson sold the station Javier Macias (as Azteca Communications of Alabama, owners of several other AMs in the state) in 2002.; With an ownership change, the calls became WCOC; the format flipped from country to a regional Mexican music format as "Que Buena". Christian religious programming on weekends remained in English during this period. The station also carried Atlanta Braves baseball in Spanish. The station fell silent in August 2007 and was reported back on in October of that same year. At some point since then the station has gone silent and the old studio on Old US 78 is reported to be in a state of disrepair. The station has been on for short periods to keep the license active, and was most recently heard on air in September of 2012 for a week, and again with some more permanence in May of 2013, to keep the license active. During the latest on-air period it is broadcasting straight-up Spanish religious programming. As of October 2014, it's unknown if the station is active or not.