HD-PTY-[not present]
// WGOK Mobile, AL
HD-2: News/Talk
// WXQW Fairhope, AL
:PS-104.1 WDLT
PS-(song) (artist) 104.1 WDLT
Time-Present
Text-104.1 WDLT Smooth Hits
Text-(song) (artist) 104.1 WDLT
PTY-Soft Rhythm and Blues
PI-WDLT-FM
AUX: 4.7 kW @ 325 feet HAAT. 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.
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[Picture] Image of the RDS text display of a Sony Bluetooth portable headset showing the scrolling Radio Text.
[Picture] Image of the HD PAD data display from a Mazda sedan's radio, showing the Song, Artist, Album and Format fields. From 2015.
[Picture] Image of the HD PAD data display from a Volkswagen sedan's radio, showing the Song and Artist fields as well as a mysterious "HDlive" graphic. From 2016.
[Aircheck] WYOK's flip from Jack FM to contemporary hit radio "104-1 WABD" in HD. (3'05", 4.25 MB)
[Studio] Street View imagery of the Cumulus Mobile studios.
In August 1979, the license was sold to Talton Broadcasting Company of Escambia County. They flipped the format to Country in 1980 as WSKR "Kicker 104". In 1981, the station applied for a permit to relocate to the WEAR-TV tower in rural Baldwin County to better serve Mobile and Pensacola. That permit was granted in March 1982, however it wasn't built out for quite some time. No less than five extensions were filed, and various modifications were filed, kicking a license to cover for the major move to August 1985. In the interim, the station was sold (in 1984, to Keymarket Gulf Coast, Inc.,), becoming "Wizard 104" WIZD, a highly-promoted Hot Adult Contemporary station. In October 1988, the AM and FM were sold off separately, with this station going to Westcom of Alabama, Inc. They flipped the format to Classic Rock with the WGCX call letters.
The station was acquired by Capitol Broadcasting, Inc. in November 1994 for $3.3 million. They wanted to use the station to compete with the dominant country station in Mobile, WKSJ, so they moved the WGCX calls and format to 92.1 and this station became Country WDWG "The Dawg". Just a few years after trying to compete with WKSJ, the stations found themselves under the same Clear Channel radio ownership, so this station morphed into a Classic Country format to flank the contemporary country of their now-stablemate. In 1999, Cumulus and Clear Channel arranged a swap of stations, with Cumulus taking this station and Clear Channel getting Pascagoula, Mississippi-licensed WYOK on 104.9 MHz. The Dawg format went there, while the WYOK Hip-Hop format moved here. This gave Cumulus a much bigger signal for the urban format but again, the station found itself competing with the company's other Hip-Hop success, WBLX. Therefore, in October 1999 the station flipped to an upbeat Hot Adult Contemporary format as "Star 104".
In September 2004, Hurricane Ivan struck the Alabama gulf coast, causing the collapse of the 1,800 foot broadcast tower that housed this station, along with TV stations WPMI and WHBR, and radio stations WJLQ, WKSJ, WBLX and WMEZ. While all the stations were able to relocate to alternate facilities, the time off the air caused ratings trouble for this station. Before the hurricane, it was working its way towards actually beating dominant coastal CHR (Contemporary Hit Radio) WABB, but afterwards, it could never quire regain ground in the ratings. During this period, the station first started transmitting in the HD digital format in July 2005. By 2006, the station gave up the hit music ratings race and flipped to Contemporary Country as "Kicks 104.1".
In mid-March 2009, the station began stunting with TV show themes as "TV 104", encouraging listeners to tune in on March 19th at 1:04pm. Rumors suggested the station would launch a Variety Hits format, and those rumors turned out to be true, with the station debuting a satellite-fed Jack FM format.
Early in 2012 it was announced that Dittman Broadcasting would be selling off their legendary CHR station WABB to religious broadcasters K-Love. While no one would be allowed to take their iconic call sign, Cumulus was quick to scoop up similar WABD calls at the end of February 2012 in preparation for a flip to a very similar feeling CHR format to WABB's. With 30 minutes of a bell tolling starting at midnight on 1 March 2012, the station flipped to CHR and began using a WABB-sound-alike slogan, "All the hits 104-1 WABD", complete with a similar-looking logo to WABB's. As part of the attempt to pick up the torch, they eventually hired Q-Tip and Nick Fox from WABB to keep up appearances. The station was granted some minor technical changes in a permit granted in May 2012, which also included a change of the city of license from Atmore to Saraland.
Of note is that the entire reason this charade took place is because Bernie Dittman's family didn't want to sell WABB directly to one of the major corporate companies like Cumulus or Clear Channel. But Cumulus would eventually get their hands on the property by arranging a swap/sell with K-Love, with the religious broadcasters getting the smaller signal that had Urban WDLT on 98.3 MHz and Cumulus getting the 97.5 license for their CHR sound-alike format. On 14 July 2012, K-Love moved to 98.3, WABD moved to 97.5 and WDLT and its Urban Adult Contemporary format moved here. There was a slight hiccup in the move, with this station briefly identifying as WLVM while the WDLT urban format played on air. Shortly afterward the 98.3 frequency was changed to a noncommercial allocation and the call sign was moved over, setting everything in place.
Not long after these changes, it was noted that there was some sort of glitch with the HD digital transmission system on the station causing it to no longer decode on many radios. Radios that did still decode it were showing a mysterious "HD Radio Live" logo. That lasted for years but was finally fixed in May 2018.
The HD signals went off in the spring of 2020, but came back in August 2022. In March 2023 Cumulus added two HD subchannels, one for AM gospel sister station WGOK and one for sister news/talk station WXQW.