Technical Profile: WZTQ

AM Technical Profile: WZTQ

Frequency:: 1560
Format:: Religious
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] East of Centre on US-411, between County Roads 441-D and 936.
Power (ERP):: Day: 1 kW
Antenna:: Day: 1 tower
Other Information:: [FCC]
[FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]; [Facebook]
Silent
History:: This station dates back to November of 1962, when it came on the air with 1 kW with a country music format, with the WAGC calls. In more recent times the station had a southern gospel format in the early 2000's. The calls changed to WZTQ in August 2003, and it most likely started carrying the religious "Joy Christian Radio" network at that time through an LMA with the Radio Centre owners. Radio Centre passed the license on to Joy Christian Communications in November 2003. Joy swapped the calls of this station with their affiliate in Jasper, and this station became WLYJ in September 2007. The station filed to operate as a non-commercial broadcaster in January of 2011. The calls flipped back to WZTQ in February 2012 when Joy sold the WLYJ calls to American Family Radio for use on their station in Tullahoma, Tennessee. It was announced in October 2012 that Joy was donating the station to ZYPRadio, who operated a progressive talk station in Atlanta. ZYPRadio took over operation and switched the format to oldies. The donation fell through, so ownership and operation again reverted to Joy Christian Communications. They changed the calls back to WLYJ again in May, 2013. In keeping with Joy's habit of playing musical chairs with call signs, the calls again changed to WZTQ in October of 2014. (The WLYJ calls are on Joy's FM station in their home town of Tullahoma as of March 2012.) The station went silent at some point in recent times, 2012 or 2013, although not silent STA was ever filed with the FCC. In keeping with Joy's poor operating practices, most of their stations are off air and not reported to the FCC, while their network and local station websites are active but "under construction" with no content. It's unknown if this station is active again or, but as of March 2016 their Facebook page is active with regular posts of recipes, of all things.

After remaining silent for too long, the FCC deleted the license for this station in early July, 2016.