FM Technical Profile: WYCT
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- Station Name:
- Cat Country 98.7
- Frequency:
- 98.7
- Format:
- Country
- Transmitter
Location:
- [map]
[street
view] Just west of AL-112 (Old Pensacola Road) near the
Perdido River and AL/FL border, down Alec Road.
- Power (ERP):
- 100 kW
- Antenna:
- Directional
- Antenna HAAT:
- 981 feet
- Other
Information:
- 60 dBu protected
contour
map, from the FCC.
-
— Increased power:
10%
:
PS-WYCT [song
title/artist]
Time-No
Text-Cat Country 98.7
850-430-1987
- Text-CMA Station Of The Year
Nominee & Hometown Proud!
PTY-Country
PI-WYCT-FM
AF-98.7
MHz (filler)
HD-2: Adult Contemporary
"Pensacola's Playlist"
// W233CM Milton, FL
HD-3: Talk/News
"Newsradio
92.3 FM 1620AM"
// WNRP Gulf Breeze, FL
// W222BR Pensacola, FL
HD-4: Sports Talk
"ESPN Pensacola"
// WEBY Milton, FL
// W256DL Milton, FL
- AUX: 1 kW directional
@ 981 feet. 60 dBu protected
contour
map, from the FCC.
AUX:
14 kW @ 246 feet. 60 dBu protected
contour
map, from the FCC. (CP)
- More Information:
- [FCC]
- [FCCdata]
- [Radio-Locator]
- [Wikipedia]
[Facebook]
For Cat Country 98.7
[Facebook]
For Pensacola's Playlist 94.5
[Facebook] For
Newsradio 92.3/1620
[Facebook]
For ESPN Pensacola
[Picture]
Image of an RDS text display from an Insignia HD portable, showing
the PI (call sign) and Radio Text fields, from late 2016.
[Picture]
Image of an RDS text display from a Mazda sedan's radio, showing the
PS (station name), Radio Text and PTY (format) fields, from
mid-2017.
[Picture]
Image of an RDS text display from a Hyundai OEM radio, showing a PTY
(format) and Radio Text fields along with internet-sourced station
name and image data. From June 2024.
[Picture]
Image of the HD PAD (Program Associated Data) for the main channel,
including Artist Experience (station logo graphic), on a car radio,
from December 2017.
[Picture]
Image of the HD PAD and Artist Experience for the main channel,
from August 2022.
[Picture]
Image of the HD PAD and Artist Experience for the
"Pensacola's Playlist 94.5" subchannel, from August 2022.
[Picture]
Image of the HD PAD and Artist Experience for the
"Newsradio 92.3 FM and 1620 AM" subchannel, from August
2022.
[Picture]
Image of the HD PAD and Artist Experience for the
"ESPN Pensacola" subchannel, from August 2022.
[Studio]
Street View imagery of the ADX Pensacola studios behind University
Town Plaza in Pensacola.
[Aircheck]
This "scoped" aircheck has had all the music excised (for
copyright reasons), and includes all the commercial breaks over
a 1.5 hour period on 23 August 2017. It features local
ads, disc jockey patter, public service announcements, weather,
traffic and more. Approximately 21 minutes in
length. M4A (AAC) format, 27.97 MB total.
- Owner:
- Mary Elizabeth Hoxeng
Revocable Trust
- History:
- This frequency
was first allocated to the Pensacola area back around 1985 as a
class C2, with a whopping 21 applicants vying for the last major
dial position on the Alabama/Panhandle coast. Marty and
Barbara MacGreevy of Perdido Key (Panama Mac's owner) got the intial
decision from the FCC judge. Several behind-the-scenes delays
occurred, delaying the debut of the station for over a decade:
first, on of the losing applicants contested the FCC decision all
the way to the Supreme Court. The moving of a transmitter
licensed to Andalusia on 98.1 MHz later created more complex
tower-siting issues. Eventually FCC policy changed, allowing
the station to upgrade from a C2 to a C1 class, while iHeart Radio's
Panama City station on 98.5 MHz accepted a voluntary downgrade from
a class C1 to a C0.
The station finally debuted in 2003, playing Christmas music to
Pensacola. After the holidays it flipped to contemporary
country as "Cat Country 98.7". This is the Mobile-Pensacola market's
third country station. WKSJ plays primarily to Mobile and has
miniscule ratings in Pensacola, and Pensacola's WXBM barely makes a
dent in Mobile. In December 2003 it became the first station
in the Mobile-Pensacola market to begin broadcasting using
Ibiquity's HD Radio (IBOC) system.
As of fall 2010 the HD had been switched off, although it came back
on after a transmitter upgrade at the end of August, 2017, then went
off a few days later. The station filed to operate the HD
feature at higher than standard power (10% on the upper sideband, 5%
on the lower sideband). The station began broadcasting in HD
again in mid-December 2017, but with mono analog audio. The HD
was off (again) due to technical issues in May 2018, but came on a
few days after initially going off. Analog audio continued to
be mono until mid-June 2018, when it finally went back in
stereo.
As part of the update to HD radio, the station began carrying sister
News/Talk WNRP 1620 on the HD 3 and 4 channels, feeding a couple of
area translators. In July 2018 a domain registration leaked
the company's plans to launch a Sports Talk format on the HD-2,
feeding W233CM on 94.5 MHz, a translator moved in to Pensacola from
nearby Milton. It appears it launched on 22 August 2018, with
one local show at noon and ESPN content the rest of the day.
Shortly after ADX acquired crosstown talk rival WEBY in Milton in
the winter of 2019, the HD-3 channel switched from WNRP to WEBY in
March. That only lasted through part of the summer as WEBY was
then flipped to a simulcast of WNRP. That, in turn, only
lasted a few weeks, as in mid-August 2019, ADX flipped WEBY and its
translator into the home of Sports Talk "ESPN Pensacola". It
was also announced that a new format would debut on the original
sports translator at 94.5 MHz sometime in September.
In early November 2019, the station re-arranged some of the
programming on their HD subchannels, launching a Christmas music
format on the 94.5 MHz translator fed by WYCT-HD2. The company also
said they'd debut a new format on the 1 January 2010 with this
broadcast. The ESPN Pensacola format moved to WEBY and its
translator as well as WYCT-HD4. After Christmas, the HD-2
began stunting with various versions of the awful earworn "Baby
Shark" song. It finally flipped to an Adult Contemporary
format as "Pensacola's Blend" on 13 January 2020.
In June 2021, David Hoxeng's ADX Communications swapped this
station, as well as the W233CM translator, to his wife Mary's
revocable trust in exchange for three residential properties held by
that trust.