Technical Profile: WEBY

AM Technical Profile: WEBY

Frequency:: 1330
Format:: Sports Talk
Transmitter Location:: [map] [bird's eye] Day: Site just south of I-10 and FL-281 (Avalon Boulevard). Co-located with WPNN.; [map] [street views: one | two] [bird's eye] Night: Off Printers Alley in Milton, just west of Ward Basin Road. This is the old day & night site before the power upgrade.
Power (ERP):: Day: 25 kW; Night: 79 watts
Antenna:: Day: 2 towers, directional to the west in a squashed circular pattern, with no minor lobes elsewhere. [pattern - PDF]; Night: 1 tower
Other Information:: 0.5 mV/m Daytime Groundwave Service Contour from the FCC's Public Files
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[FCCdata.org]
[FCCInfo]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
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[Image] RDS display image for translator W256DL Milton, as seen on a Mazda OEM car stereo screen. From December 2018.
[Image] RDS display image for translator W256DL Milton, as seen on a Hyundai OEM car stereo screen. From May 2023.

// W256DL Milton (Pensacola), FL
History:: This station goes back to 1954, when C. W. Maypoles put the station on the air on with 1 kW of power as a daytimer. The original call sign was WEBY, although it has not always had those calls through its long history. By the early 1960's, the station was running 5 kW and had picked up Mutual Broadcasting Service affiliation. In 1964 they spawned WXBM on the FM dial and were running a full service format with country music on the AM, and pretty much country 24/7 on the FM. By 1970 the AM too had gone at least 50% country. In 1972 the station lost its license for failing to provide equal time after an on air personality editorially attacked another person.

The frequency remained vacant until a permit for a new station was issued; that was to be WFGS, licensed to Milton and still as a 5 kW daytimer. The station eventually returned to the air at some time in 1978, from the current nighttime site off Ward Basin Road. By 1982 it was WSWL, owned by Bright Horizons Productions, Inc., and running a news/talk format with CNN news. The station was acquired by Wave Broadcasting, Inc. in 1983, and changed the calls to WAVX but kept the news/talk going.

The station was sold to No. 1 Broadcasting in 1985. They changed the calls back to WEBY and launched an oldies/nostalgia format. It was likely around this time that the station picked up its first ever nighttime service, with 79 watts of non-directional power. They went back to news/talk in the mid-90's. Current owners Spinnaker License Corp. bought the station in 2002.

On May 25^th, 2006 the station began broadcasting from a new day tower site, with more power. The construction permit that appeared at the start of September 2011 appears to modify some minor parameters of the day site but leaves most of the data and coverage unchanged. In July 2012 the station's signal was interrupted by a grass fire that melted some of their transmission cables. The fire was started by a farmer's tractor in a nearby field. The station ran on an STA through July 2013. Also in July 2013, another construction permit appeared that knocked the day site down to two towers from three, with no other obvious changes beyond that. The 2 tower facility went on the air in July of 2014.

The station received a permit to construct a new FM translator in Pensacola in late January, 2018. The station entered into a time brokerage agreement with ADX Communications of Pensacola in December of 2017, and in early April 2018 it was announced that ADX would be acquiring the station for $300,000 and moving the talk programming from WNRP 1620 to this facility.

The translator was reported on air testing in mid-May 2019. Only a few months after gaining the FM translator, ADX began simulcasting the station with WNRP, ending WEBY's own talk shows in the process. In mid-August 2019, WEBY and its translator became the new home for Sports Talk "ESPN Pensacola".