Technical Profile: WGSV

AM Technical Profile: WGSV

Frequency:: 1270
Format:: Talk, News
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] On the northern side of US-431 in town, between Gilley Street and Mountain Crest Drive.
Power (ERP):: Day: 1 kW; Night: 124 watts (authorized)
Antenna:: 1 tower
Other Information:: 0.5 mV/m Daytime Groundwave Service Contour from the FCC's Public Files
[FCC]
[FCCData.org]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
[Facebook]; Stereo
Owned by Guntersville Broadcasting Corporation (Sylvia Jackson)
History:: An original construction permit for a new station was granted to H. E. Moore (doing business as The Guntersville Broadcasting Company), in August 1948. When the station signed on in the spring of 1950, it was on 1270 kHz, with 1,000 watts days only through a Raytheon RA-1000A transmitter. The calls were and still are WGSV (GunterSVille). The original studio and transmitter were located near the intersection of Brown's Valley Road and US-241 (which is AL-79 today). J. C. Vessels of Chattanooga and Claude M. Gray of Birmingham were engineers involved in getting the station on the air, according to FCC records.

The station's broadcast tower moved in 1956 to its present site at US-231 and Pleasant Grove Road.

The station spawned an FM companion in 1969, WTWX-FM.

No format information is listed in Broadcasting Yearbook for the station until the mid-80's, and it's thought that it operated as a full service small town station, with a mix of music, news and sports information. By 1987, the AM is listed as having an Adult Contemporary music format. It's believed that when the station went to a full music format, it also began operating in C-QUAM AM stereo, which is may still use to this day.

The station remained Adult Contemporary until the end of the decade, when by 1999 it had flipped to the News/Talk format that it retains today.