AM Technical Profile: WQCR
[ Home |
Statewide: AM
| FM |
LPFM
| Translators |
TV
| LPTV |
LDTV ]
[ Metros: Birmingham |
Mobile |
Montgomery
| Huntsville |
Columbus,
GA | Dothan |
Tuscaloosa
| The Shoals ]
- Frequency:
- 1500
- Format:
- Regional
Mexican
- Transmitter
Location:
- [map]
[bird's
eye] [street
view] Just east of intersection of Shelby Co. 24 and Camp
Branch Rd., east of Alabaster.
- Power (ERP):
- Day: 2.3 kW
- Critical Hours:
1.2 kW
- Night: 3 watts
- Antenna:
- 1 tower
- Other
Information:
-
0.5
mV/m Daytime
Groundwave Service
Contour from the
FCC's Public Files
[FCC]
[FCCdata]
- [Radio-Locator]
- [Wikipedia]
[Facebook]
- [Bhamwiki]
Information on the station from the WQMS era
- History:
- The station
originally started out in the late 70's or early 80's as WQMS, with
a satellite-fed adult contemporary format. The owner at the
time commented that there was no sense in hiring live announcers;
his big city competitors (like WSGN, WERC and WAPI) would get
those. It may have later had a stink with talk and
sports. On 1 December 1984 the calls changed to WGTT and a
long line of formats were to follow. First was country as
"Great Country", then oldies as "Great Oldies", southern gospel as —
you guessed it — "Great Gospel", then later back to oldies… then
gospel again by the 90's with music, sermons and live & local
announcers. At that time, it was still a 1,000 watt daytimer whose
studios and transmitter were off Industrial Drive in
Alabaster. In December of 2000 the calls switched to WQCR (Quality
Christian Radio) and the transmitter site was eventually moved to an
area east of town. In September 2002 the station switched to
Spanish-language programming as "Radio Alegria". It later became
part of the "La 10 Q" network of AMs across North Alabama. In
January 2009 it was reported that this station was being simulcast
on Bessemer area AM'er WZGX and Lexington, Alabama station
WJHX. WJHX and WZGX are owned by Bar Broadcasting, while WQCR
is owned by Riviera Broadcasting. WQCR dropped the simulcast
in the fall of 2012 for what appears to be a Spanish "Juan" (Jack
FM) type variety hits format.
This station was reported to be off the air at the start of June 2015,
but back on shortly thereafter. After several years with "Juan",
the format appears to have (as of April 2017) now become a simulcast
of the "El Jefa" regional Mexican format of Birmingham's 1220 WAYE.