Technical Profile: WALJ

FM Technical Profile: WALJ

Station Name:

105.1 The Block
Frequency:: 105.1
Format:: Hip-Hop
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] Romulus Rd (CR-2) at Microwave Rd. in western Tuscaloosa County, a few miles south of the community of Coker.
Power (ERP):: 2.6 kW
Antenna:: Omnidirectional
Antenna HAAT:: 506 feet
Other Information:: 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.; (inactive); :PS-105.1 JAMZ Time-[?] Text-song title/artist 1051 JAMZ, Tuscaloosa's… PTY-Rhythm and Blues PI-WALJ-FM
More Information:: [FCC]; [FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
[Facebook]
[Article] AL.com article on Birmingham Mountain Radio's expansion into the Tuscaloosa market.
[Article] WBRC article on the collapse of the station's broadcast tower in April, 2019.
[Studio] Street View imagery of the building housing the SummitMedia studios off Highway 280 in Hoover, Alabama. SummitMedia runs the station for Apex.
[Image] RDS data display from an Insignia radio in northwest Alabama, showing the PI (call sign) and Radio Text fields, from August 2016.
Owner:: Apex Broadcasting
History:: This station signed on for the first time in late September 2011 as "105-1 Jamz". It is being LMA'd by Apex to SummitMedia in Birmingham, who also runs a "Jamz" station there. Local comedian Roy Wood Jr. debuted with the station as the morning show host. The station is broadcasting from the old "ARRO 100.7" site that Apex used last time they were in the market. The station began broadcasting in HD digital radio sometime in the summer of 2015 and added the Adult Album Alternative (AAA)-formatted "Birmingham Mountain Radio" program to its HD2, which is also feeding a newly built translator that came on in July of 2015. That HD-2/translator combo was severed in December of 2017 when the translator began relaying Townsquare's WTUG-HD3 Classic Hits format. It appears that WALJ dropped the HD completely at the same time.

The station was taken off the air in April 2019, when the broadcast tower collapsed during a heavy thunderstorm. The collapse was caught on video and that can be viewed in the WBRC-TV link, under More Information. The station applied for a Special Temporary Authority in May 2019 to operate with just 8 watts from a site south of Tuscaloosa. In July they applied for a permit to resume operations from the licensed transmitter site, after a tower was rebuilt in-place.

It was announced that the station was being sold to Townsquare Media, in early June 2019. They kept format but re-branded it as "105.1 The Block" on 1 August 2019, after the sale closed.