WJAB (90.9
FM) is a
National Public Radio-affiliated
college radio
Campus radio (also known as college radio, university radio or student radio) is a type of radio station that is run by the students of a college, university or other educational institution. Programming may be exclusively created or produced ...
station in
Huntsville, Alabama. It primarily features
jazz and
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
music programming aimed toward
African-American residents of the northern counties of
Alabama and several counties in southern middle
Tennessee.
WJAB's signal travels in about a 120-mile radius.
The station is licensed to
Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (known as "Alabama A&M" for short) in
Normal, Alabama, which is actually located within the city of Huntsville. The Telecommunications Center of the University operates the station partly as a laboratory for student announcers, producers, and journalists.
History
Beginning in the late 1970s, Alabama A&M made numerous attempts to obtain funding from the state of
Alabama and the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting in order to establish a radio station of its own. The FCC originally allocated the callsign WAED for the station.
The call sign was previously owned by
The Big JAB, an AM station in Westbrook, Maine.
The Telecommunications Center under the direction of Dr. Hayward O. Handy and Elizabeth Sloan-Ragland, both now deceased, was best known during the 1970s and 1980s for producing several weekly public affairs and features shows seen on
Alabama Public Television, including ''Montage'' and ''Upstate.'' The Center also produced ''The Alabama A&M Football Review'' with announcer Ike Rooks, which aired on Huntsville-area commercial television stations.
After years of bureaucratic wrangling and waiting for governments to afford the needed appropriations, AAMU realized its goal in 1991. Since that time, the station has consistently placed the concerns of its listeners in very high regard with programming such as interview shows, music of all varieties throughout the
Pan-African world, and live broadcasts of AAMU
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
and men's
basketball games.
The station was assigned the WJAB
call letters by the
Federal Communications Commission on January 23, 1990.
Notable personalities have included "The Maestro" Shawn Patrick, Jackie Anderson, Marcus Simms, Joy Sidney, Douglas Turner, Theodore Lindsey, Heidi Traylor, Joyce Coffman, Kerry Macklin, Erica Fox, Don Juan, Toni Neal, Sam Terry, Ellen Washington, Billy “Brother B.J.” Lewis, Shannon Rice and Chris Carlisle.
See also
*
List of jazz radio stations in the United States
This is a list of terrestrial, satellite and internet radio stations which identify themselves as playing jazz in any of its forms (mainstream, traditional, fusion, acid, and smooth, among others), or have substantial jazz programming, that can be ...
References
External links
WJAB official website*
{{Alabama college radio
JAB
Blues radio stations
JAB
Jazz radio stations in the United States
NPR member stations
Radio stations established in 1991
1991 establishments in Alabama