Technical Profile: WLNO

AM Technical Profile: WLNO

Frequency:: 1060
Format:: Religious
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] [bird's eye] West of LA-406 (Woodland Highway) north of Belle Chasse, near Bayou Barriere Golf Course and the Bailey Estates subdivision.
Power (ERP):: Day: 10 kW; Night: 245 watts
Antenna:: Day and night: One tower
Other Information:: 0.5 mV/m Daytime Groundwave Service Contour from the FCC's Public Files
[FCC]
[FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
Owned by Eternity Media Group; Stereo (inactive)
History:: WNOE was the city's original Top 40 leader in the late 50's. Call letters stood for its owner, James A. Noe, who also owned KNOE in Monroe, Louisiana. Prior to the Top 40, it was a Mutual network affiliate adult station. WNOE stayed with Top 40 until the late 60's when it was losing ground to WTIX; it then went to a Pop-Adult sound. Around 1973, it went back to Top 40, using its FM station to simulcast some of the time. Later went Country since the market lacked a full time country outlet. WNOE AM and FM simulcast until the AM's ratings ceased to add anything to the totals. The AM was then sold off to a religious broadcaster who changed the calls to WLNO in 1995. The station remained on-air until the summer of 2014 when it fell silent for a period. It came back but fell silent again the very next summer, in July 2015. Two months later, it was announced the station was being sold by WLNO Trust (Stephan Sloan) to David Pugh's Eternity Media Group, LLC. As part of the assignment of the license, Eternity will be removing all of the "moveable" equipment from the current transmitter site, which was reported as no longer available for use, and moving to a new transmitter site. The station eventually resumed operations in March of 2016, with 5 kW days and 1.25 kW nights via a longwire antenna at the old tower site. They reported that the new property owners had taken down all the towers, but allowed them to broadcast from there with a temporary setup until a new tower could be built. The station continued to operate under special temporary authority in this fashion until the present day.

In September 2017, the station received a permit to drop from 50 kW days to 10 kW, and 5 kW nights directional to just 245 watts, from the same tower site they'd always used. The station had previously utilized a large directional system, with two towers in the day for a broad pattern towards New Orleans and then a 6 tower array with a highly focused signal towards New Orleans and Metarie at night. The new facility went on the air in early January 2018, although as of September 2019, it has not been approved by the FCC, for unknown reasons.

The station received another STA in April 2021, citing the loss of the towers and requesting to operate from one tower with 5 kW days and 70 watts nights. That STA was set to expire on 18 October 2021, at which point the technical licensed facility would revert to the (long gone) six tower directional array from years ago.