Technical Profile: WPFM

FM Technical Profile: WPFM

Station Name:: K-Love
Frequency:: 107.9
Format:: Contemporary Christian
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] [bird's eye] North of Scotts Ferry Road east of McGill Road, near the Youngstown community, at the Bay-Calhoun County Line. (CP)
Power (ERP):: 54 kW
Antenna:: Omni
Antenna HAAT:: 1266 feet
Other Information:: 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.; AUX: 1.3 kW @ 114 feet. 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC. (possibly deleted*); :

PS-(artist/song) K-LOVE
Time-[unknown]
Text-(artist/song) K-LOVE
PTY-Adult Hits
PI-WPFM-FM
More Information:: [FCC]; [FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
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[Image] Image of the K-Love RDS information as decoded in SDRUno on a PC. From March 2019.
[Tribute Site] Interesting stream of 80's era WPFM can be found at this site.
STA: Station is authorized to operate at an unspecified low power while repairs are made to the coax. (April 2023)
Owner:: Educational Media Foundation
History:: This station has an interesting origin story in that it was put on the air by the owners of the Captain Andersons restaurant in 1964. They owned the rights to distribute Muzak™ and used the station's SCA to send it out. The main channel was completely automated. At the start it was WMAI. It later changed to WPFM, and the station went rock in the early 70's under the ownership of Bromo Communications. By the 80's it was a pretty well entrenched top 40 under Barry Turner's ownership. They took a crack at alt. rock in December 1993 but eventually moved back to top 40. In fact, the next decade or so can be summed up as periods of top 40 mixed with periods of rock. In 1997 they changed calls to WDRK as "Rock 108", then as WLHR in the late 90's as "Hot 108". Since 2004 they were back to the old WPFM calls as "107-9 PFM" with top 40.; In January 2013 the station received a permit to move to a taller tower near the Bay/Blount County line. The power was cut by almost half but the coverage area will shrink only very slightly, with most of the loss of coverage in the Dothan area.

Powell Broadcasting announced in mid-September 2018 that they were selling the station to K-Love parent Educational Media Foundation for $472,000. The format is expected to flip to K-Love's Contemporary Christian (CCM) format soon.

The station was taken off the air by Hurricane Michael, which hit the area on 10 October 2018. Due to the catastrophic amount of damage that was sustained at the Powell Broadcasting studios in Panama City, the company announced it would cease broadcasting permanently in Panama City, taking sister stations WKNK, WRBA and WASJ off the air for good. In December 2018 the company announced the cluster, excluding this station, was to be sold to Gulf Coast Broadcasting. This station would be spun off separately, sold to Educational Media Foundation for $472,000.

In December 2018, the station returned to the air with EMF's K-Love Contemporary Christian music format. The station was taken off the air briefly in August 2022 due to burned out coax. They filed a resumption of operations soon, but operating with a Special Temporary Authority (STA) at low power. The station resumed full power operations in December 2022 according to FCC filings.

The station was again reported silent, this time in mid-March 2023. In another Silent STA filing with the FCC, EMF reported that the culprit was once again burned out coax. At the end of that month, the station filed a resumption of operations notice, then another STA for operating at an unspecified low power level.

* - A request to cancel a license to cover for the auxiliary permit was filed in mid-April 2023. The auxiliary site, first licensed in August of 2005, was for just 1.3 kW from a short tower on the Powell Broadcasting property near Panama City Beach. It appears that there is actually a second facility record for this AUX site, so it will remain listed here even though it's almost certainly not used by EMF.