Technical Profile: WYDE-FM

FM Technical Profile: WYDE

Station Name:: —
Frequency:: 92.5
Format:: Religious Music, Talk
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] [bird's eye] Alabama 261, approx. 1/2 mile north of Walker County line, near the Gardenia Lane turnoff.
Power (ERP):: 2.2 kW
Antenna:: Omnidirectional
Antenna HAAT:: 548 feet.
Other Information:: 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.
:
PS-WYDE FM
Time-[?]
Text-92.5/850
PTY-Religious Music
PI-; (inactive - 05-24-2012); HD-2: WDJC, Birmingham, AL; HD-3: WXJC, Cullman, AL
More Information:: [FCC]; [FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
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[Studio] Street View imagery of the Crawford Broadcasting studios on Summit Parkway in Homewood.
[Image] Image of the RDS text as decoded on a dirty Mazda OEM car stereo, May 2019.; // WYDE Birmingham
Owner:: Crawford Broadcasting
History:: J.T. Roberts, a Birmingham-area dance club owner, won a new construction permit for a station licensed to the town of Dora, in August 1996. His station signed on in January 1998 as WZJT, a Top 40/Dance hybrid formatted station with studios in a small building on US Highway 78 just outside of Dora. The slogan was "Party Radio Z-92.5". The weak signal kept it from making any inroads in Birmingham. To compensate for the puny signal in the city, the processing was cranked up to the max, resulting in a fatiguing, compressed sound. Roughly two years after debuting, the station was sold to Queen of Peace Radio, Inc., for $750,000. They flipped the format to Catholic Religious programming, a rarity at the time. Content came from Birmingham's own EWTN. In April 2000, the calls became WQOP (Queen Of Peace).; In May 2004 the Birmingham News reported the station was sold to Crawford Broadcasting. Shortly after acquisition, the station began simulcasting WXJC-AM. Crawford has changed the calls to WXJC-FM (as well as WDJC-AM to WXJC-AM). The city of license was changed from Dora to Cordova in the spring of 2005. This was done in part to facilitate some changes to other stations across central Alabama, allowing for some upgrades and frequency changes to take place elsewhere. The station also began broadcasting in the iBiquity HD digital scheme around this time.

The call sign changed to WPHC in February 2006, a portend of changes to come. In May the format flipped to a secular Country format and the station re-branded as "Positive Hit Country". The format morphed to a Christian Country format in October.

Crawford flipped their FM talker WYDE-FM "The Source" to an oldies format in July 2007, displacing all of their local talk talent. Some of them migrated to WXJC (AM) and this station went back into a simulcast for the second time, as WXJC-FM.

A transmitter issue caused the loss of the HD broadcasts in 2012; although they were expected to be back by 2016, it's unclear if they ever returned and as of the fall of 2018, the station is analog-only.

In early November 2018, Crawford decided to once again end the talk radio format on WYDE-FM. This time, they decided to move WXJC's programming (and calls) to that FM outlet. That occurred on midnight 5 November 2018. The Cullman station became WXJC-FM, and this station became WYDE-FM. This station entered into a simulcast with 1260 AM (WYDE) and the format of both stations flipped to Inspirational Music.

In August 2021 a storm damaged the transmission line at the tower site, and the station operated on low power for about a month.