FM Technical Profile: WMSR

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Station Name:

94.9 The Bull

Frequency:

94.9

Format:

Mainstream Country

Transmitter Location:

[map] North of TN-227, Off Craig Road, northeast of the rural Tennessee community of Cypress Inn

Power (ERP):

7.1 kW

Antenna:

Directional

Antenna HAAT:

594 feet

Other Information:

60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.

:

PS-WMSR
Time-[?]
Text-TODAY'S NEW COUNTRY WMSR 94.9 THE BULL
PTY-[?]
PI-WMSR-FM

More Information:

[FCC]

[FCCdata]

[Radio-Locator]

[Wikipedia]
[Facebook]

[Studio] Street View imagery of the Singing River Media studios on East 2nd Street in Muscle Shoals.
[Image] Image of the station's RDS display on an Insignia HD portable radio. From February 2024.

[Article] Story on station's stunting before switching to AAA format that led to bomb scare at local schools.

Owner:

Singing River Media Group

History:

This station dates back to an original permit issued in 1990 to Pioneer Radio, for a new class A FM station on 94.9 MHz, licensed to Waynesboro.  The station signed on in the winter of 1991 as WTNR-FM, duplication its sister AM station's Country and weekend Gospel music format.  The station split from the AM, most likely in the spring of 1994, when the AM went talk.  This station picked up a Country format and changed called to WFRQ.  They also got a boost in coverage to better reach the nearby Florence-Muscle Shoals market. The country lasted about four years, then they tried Soft Rock.  That lasted until either late 2000 or early 2001, when the station went Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) as "Star 94.9". 

The station got another coverage boost in 2001 when they relocated to a site near the Cypress Inn community.  In addition to the tower move, they got a boost from 6.8 to 7.1 kW of power, which gave them nearly full coverage of the Shoals metro area.  At this time, the station re-licensed from Waynesboro to Collinwood. 

It flipped to a more adult-oriented new music Adult Album Alternative (AAA) format in August of 2013, but kept the "Star" name.  Before the switch, the station stunted with a bit of radio theater involving aliens or 'star people' commenting on the music, as the type of music changed at regular intervals.  Inexplicably, this caused a minor panic with some local schools interpreting the "takeover" by aliens as a bomb threat, and despite proclamations from local police and the station that it was just a humorous stunt, several local schools increased security around the time the new format was to debut.  See the article linked above under "More Information" for more details. 

In early November 2015 the station teased a big change, which turned out to be nothing more than a re-branding, from Star 94 to 94.9 The X.

On 5 July 2017, Tuscumbia Utilities disconnected the power to the URBan Radio studios in town, causing all the stations to lose their programming feeds.  The stations fell silent (but remained on with dead air).  The station returned to the air on 12 July 2017.

In late March 2018, the station dropped the Adult Album Alternative for Urban Contemporary as "Power 94.9".

The station was sold, along with the other URBan Radio group of stations, to Singing River Media Group in October 2018, for $1.275 million.  Singing River Media Group is headed by James Michael Self, whose father (D. Mitchell Self) was the former owner of WLAY AM and FM.  In late April 2019, the station dropped the Urban Contemporary format for Contemporary Country as "94.9 The Bull", then subsequently tweaked the format more towards Mainstream Country shortly afterwards.

The station was reported to have added RDS in early 2024.