:PS-WXJC-FM
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HD-2: // WDJC-FM Birmingham, AL
// WXJC Birmingham
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[Picture] HD-1 display from an Insignia HD portable located in the Florence area.
[Picture] HD-2 display from an Insignia HD portable located in the Florence area.
[Studio] Street View imagery of the Crawford Broadcasting studios on Summit Parkway in Homewood.
Seeking more coverage, the station moved to 101.1 MHz in 1953, and got a power boost to 5.3 kW, bumping them up to a Class B signal. They kept the same antenna, apparently, but added a GE RF-2A transmitter.
In 1966, the station moved the FM transmitter site to the AM towers on Warnke Road just west of downtown. They installed a ten bay Co-El-Co 10FM antenna and lowered the ERP (effective radiated power) to 4 kW. A year later they were granted a permit to make a big change: 86.7 kW from a antenna height of 328 feet above average terrain (HAAT). It did not go on the air until 1970. It's likely that there were a variety of formats through these early years, including Country, Adult Contemporary and Nostalgia, all in glorious mono and all simulcasting the AM full time.
The station received a permit to boost coverage quite a bit again in 1987, when a permit for 100 kW from the current transmitter site was first issued. Getting this upgrade on the air proved even more difficult that the previous upgrade. They went through no less than 10 extensions or requests to replace an expired permit before the upgraded signal signed on in 1997 — ten whole years after the permit was first issued! By this point, the station was only duplicating the AM some of the time and was noted to have a Classic Country format, which, thanks to the massive signal, blanketed much of north and central Alabama. Unfortunately, this upgrade proved to be somewhat questionable. While putting some signal into many cities (Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Gadsden, Huntsville, Florence, Jasper, and of course, Cullman) it proved to be too weak in any of the rated markets to make a dent. The expense of running a big station in a small town proved to be too much hassle for Eddins Broadcasting Company (which rose out of Voice of Cullman). In 1998, he leased the station to a consortium of Birmingham businesspeople intent on airing a second Contemporary Christian format in the Birmingham market. Worth noting, famous local weatherman James Spann was on the board of directors. Former WVTM-TV news anchor Wendell Harris came on as station manager.
They flipped the calls to WRRS (the WFMH calls migrated to another FM in nearby Holly Pond) in November 1998, with the launch of the Contemporary Christian format. Marketed as "Reality Radio", the format achieved only modest success, although it was popular enough to cause competitor WDJC to make changes to their own Contemporary Christian lineup. Reality Radio never made the money the owners were hoping for, partly due to the $6,800 a month rent for studios inside the Brookwood Village shopping mall in Homewood. Allegations of mismanagement were bandied about, and the entire board of directors resigned in protest of station management.
Black Crow (as STG Media) bought out Reality Radio's lease in the fall of 2001 and flipped the format to Adult Contemporary with a bit of Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR) as "101.1 The Spot". Shortly after taking over the lease, Black Crow bought the station for $12 million direct from Eddins. The music lasted until June 2002, when Black Crow sold the station to Kimtron (Crawford Broadcasting) for $8.5 million. In an unusual move for radio, the on air talent was allowed to talk about the impending demise of the station. They also ran spots asking listeners to check out the alternative rock on WRAX, a station owned by a competitor. After Crawford closed the sale, they took the station off the air to do maintenance on the transmitter.
When the station returned to the airwaves in July 2002, it was WYDE-FM, and simulcast the conservative Talk format of AM 850 WYDE in Birmingham. Around 2003, the AM split from the simulcast to do gospel, while this station received some more transmitter site work, yielding a 100 foot increase in antenna height along with a new antenna to try to mitigate some of the coverage issues in Birmigham's coveted Over-the-Mountain neighborhoods. That same year, this station became paired up with another Birmingham AM (then-)WLGD 1260 switched to WYDE (AM) to simulcast and fill in coverage gaps in Birmingham. It fell back out of the simulcast to standards again in the fall of 2006. The station picked up the iBiquity HD digital broadcasting system in either 2005 or 2006.
The 1st of July 2007 saw a major shakeup at the station, with all the talk programming being pushed out for a return to music. They did a "Christmas in July" stunt with all Christmas music until flipping to Oldies-heavy Adult Contemporary on the 5th as "Fun 101". Longtime morning show hosts Burt & Kurt, who had done a stint as talk on "The Source", stayed on as music hosts. The moniker was apparently not very well thought out: Within the station's coverage area there was another "Fun"-named outlet, licensed to Arab. After just a few days, they changed names to "Star 101". Once again, there was already a "Star" station, this time in Huntsville. They finally settled on "The New 101.1". Still, though, at the time Birmingham's 94.5 (then-)WYSF was trying something new, and they were already using the "New" moniker. So that's three existing station names that Crawford threw on here during a short period of time!