Technical Profile: WTAZ

AM Technical Profile: WTAZ

Frequency:: 1580
Format:: Sports Talk
Transmitter Location:: [map] [bird's eye] West of Cheaha Drive in Oxford, at the western terminus of Edgewood Drive, just east of Choccolocco Creek.
Power (ERP):: Day: 2.5 kW; Night: 22 watts
Antenna:: Day and night: 1 tower
Other Information:: 0.5 mV/m Daytime Groundwave Service Contour from the FCC's Public Files

[FCC]
[FCCData.org]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]

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Owned by Woodard Broadcasting
History:: The Confederate Broadcasting Company (W. K. Johnston, James Hemphill, Ned Butler) were awarded a construction permit for a new station in September 1955 in Talladega. When it signed on in 1956, the station launched as a 1 kW daytimer on 1580 kHz, as WJHB. The station's studios were on the south side of the square in downtown Talladega at 104 South Court Square, while the transmitter was nearly two miles north of downtown on Alabama Highway 102. The transmitter was a Collins 20V.

The license was transferred to the Tallabama Broadcasting Company in 1962. They changed the calls to WEYY, and in 1964 moved the studios to 146 North Court Street.

Through the 70's, the station had a Country music format with ABC network affiliation. The station moved transmitter site to a location in the 1020 Anniston Road (today's AL-21), just east of town, next to the Pine Hill Cemetery. When that facility signed on in 1971, it was with a Collins 820D-1 transmitter. The station spawned an FM companion, WHTB on 92.7 MHz, in 1972. In 1975, the station got a bump in power to 2.5 kW, but still as a daytime only operation, with a CCA AM-2500-3000D transmitter. After ownership of the company moved from Albert Rains to Jimmy E. Woodard, the company name changed from Tallabama to Woodard Broadcasting Company. The studios moved to the transmitter site in 1977.

The station was granted a major modification in 1985 to relocate to the nearby community of Oxford, south of Anniston. In 19867, the call sign changed to WOXR in anticipation of the move. The new site, with the trasmitter off Choccolocco Creek south of town, sign on in 1987. The application data for it, however, appears to have had some major errors. It put the station's coordinates at a rural location in Carroll County, Georgia, well east of Anniston. The day and night tower coordinates were also different; the day site was correctly listed as being in Oxford while the night sight was shown as the old studio location east of Talladega on AL-21. It's unclear, then, if this was a true (and rare!) two site operation, or if the station just operated day and night from the Oxford transmitter site. It wouldn't be confirmed that the Talladega night sight wasn't in use until around 2005. Either way, the Country music format remained. The studios were at 1606 South Hale Street in Oxford.

In the early 90's, the station dropped Country for Easy Listening. In the mid-90's, the studio location was at 90 Friendship Road. The station appears to have gone back to Country music towards the end of the decade, but it was not to last…

The station's format flipped to Urban Contemporary in August 2000. The call sign changed to WARB at this time.

In September 2002 the station took the famous (in Birmingham, anyway) calls of WVOK, to go with their Oxford-area FM sister station. Around that time the format changed to Oldies. Later, they picked up Scott Shannon's True Oldies channel. The True Oldies Channel format was killed off at the end of June 2014; the station has most likely picked up the "Good Time Oldies" format from Westwood One.; In March 2023 the station was granted a call sign change to WTAZ, set to take effect on 17 April 2023. It appears that some time after the call sign change, the station flipped to Fox Sports network programming as "1580 The Stadium".

The station was granted a construction permit in May 2025 at the behest of the FCC to correct a minor technical value in their nighttime parameters; a license to cover for the change was filed concurrently since no physical changes to the transmitter site were required. It also took the opportunity to (finally!) update the nighttime tower coordinates to the correct location in Oxford.