FM Technical Profile: WTVY

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Station Name:

-

Frequency:

95.5

Format:

Country

Transmitter Location:

[map] [street view: tower | sign] At the WTVY studios and old TV tower, east of Dothan.  On the south side of AL-52 just east of the town of Webb.

Power (ERP):

100 kW

Antenna:

Omni

Antenna HAAT:

1,059 feet

Other Information:

60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.

:
PS-955 WTVY-FM
Time-Present
Text-95.5 WTVY
PTY-Country
PI-WTVY-FM

AUX: 3 kW @ 591 feet. 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.

More Information:

[FCC]

[FCCdata]

[Radio-Locator]

[Wikipedia]

[Facebook]

[Studio] Street View imagery of the Gulf South studios on US-231 in Dothan.

[Image] RDS display from an OEM Mazda radio, from February 2021.

Owner:

Gulf South Broadcasting

History:

WTVY, Inc., owners of WTVY-TV channel 4 in Dothan, were granted a construction permit for a new station on 95.5 MHz in April 1966, with the WTVY-FM calls (which allegedly stood for Wonderful To Visit You.)  The station was to transmit from the WTVY-TV tower east of Dothan, with the studios located at the base along with the TV station.  Interestingly, the original permit was for an oddball antenna setup:  the grant showed an Collins 830H-1A transmitter feeding two different antennas, with different power levels for horizontal and vertical power.  The horizontal antenna was listed as a Collins 37M12, with twelve sections, while the horizontal antenna was a Collins 300M12, also with twelve sections.  The horizontal power would have been 100 kW while the vertical was 95.8 kW, both at a HAAT (Height Above Average Terrain) of 1,056 feet.

The station was slow getting built out, with multiple extensions filed to the permit.  A license to cover wasn't filed with the FCC until September 1968, at which point the complex antenna system had been simplified to a single Collins 37-CP-14 (with a whopping 14 sections!) with a 100 kW power in both the horizontal and vertical.  At the start, the station had a Middle-of-the-Road (MOR) music format. 

According to FCC records, it appears that WTVY, Inc. was going to transfer the license to a company called Tri-State Radio, Inc., in July 1973, but the transfer was dismissed.  Around this time, Charles Woods became president of the station.  He abruptly changed the format to Country music after reading an article in a trade magazine on the future of country music radio.  From that point, the station had a lock on the country audience in Dothan, as the only competition were weaker out of market signals from WLWI in Montgomery and WPAP in Panama City.  It would only start to lose ground in the ratings after cross-town station WDJR flipped to country in 1992.

In 1978, WTVY, Inc. constructed a new 1,800 foot tower for their TV station, located just over the Florida state line south of Dothan.  It appears that an application for the FM to move to that tower was filed and granted with the FCC, but was never built out.  The FM station would remain on the "old" TV tower, which was already the second one built at the TV studio site, replacing a 400 foot one first erected in the mid-50's.

The station remained under Woods' leadership until 2000, when (as Woods Communication Group), the station was sold to Jimmy Jarrell.  He, in turn, sold the station to Styles Broadcasting of Dothan in July 2001.  Over a series of license transfers between individuals and companies, the station would eventually become a part of Magic Broadcasting.
.

In July 2008 it was reported that all but one of the station's staff walked out of their jobs.  Most apparently headed to a cross-town rival radio company.

 

Magic Broadcasting sold the station to Gulf South in 2011, putting both of Dothan's country outlets under the same ownership.  In early December 2011 it was reported that the WDJR staff were to be moving to WTVY, with WDJR debuting a new format in the new year.

In early April 2025, the station filed to relocate the transmitter site from the old WTVY-TV tower east of Dothan to the WDBT and WKMX tower off County Road 9 near the community of Newton.