WATV (900 kHz) is an AM

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

licensed to

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

. It transmits on 900 AM as well as FM translator W235BS 94.9 FM. The daytime power of WATV is 845

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...

s, and during nighttime, it transmits with 158 watts. WATV is an

urban contemporary Urban contemporary music, also known as urban music, hip hop, urban pop, or just simply urban, is a music radio format. The term was coined by New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker in the early to mid-1970s as a synonym for Black music. Urban conte ...

music station, specializing in

soul In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being". Etymology The Modern English noun '' soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest atte ...

, R&B, disco, and early hip-hop from the 1970s through today. Community issues are also often discussed on the air that pertain to the African American community. It is owned by Courtney French.

History of WATV

The station currently known as WATV signed on in 1946 as WKAX. It took its present callsign in 1958, as a

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

-affiliated, dual talk/ MOR-formatted station. Prior to then, the callsign of the station was WLBS. Due to the restrictions of the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

, the station originally broadcast only during daylight hours. In 1976, the owner of WENN, the top-rated urban-formatted station in Birmingham, died. WENN was then bought by local businessman A. G. Gaston, who immediately fired Joe Lackey, the station manager; all of the disc jockeys quit in protest. Lackey was then given a job managing WATV, a radio station located on the 20th floor of the Thomas Jefferson Hotel where he brought all the former WENN personalities with him. Lackey and the ex-WENN jocks immediately changed the station's format from talk and middle of the road music to soul and disco music. Despite operating with a relatively weak AM signal and broadcasting only from sunrise until sunset, WATV immediately became the top-rated radio station in Birmingham. During the 1980s, the station's format evolved from soul music to the forerunner of today's

urban adult contemporary Urban adult contemporary, often abbreviated as urban AC or UAC, (also known as adult R&B,) is the name for a format of radio music, similar to an urban contemporary format. Radio stations using this format usually would not have hip hop music ...

format. In 1994, WATV dropped urban AC for ABC Radio Networks' Urban Gold. Eventually the station was forced to move to 3025 Ensley Avenue, where the studios remain to this day. In 2002, the station's owners, the Rev. Dr. Erskine Ramsay Faush Sr and Shelley Stewart, both longtime radio personalities in the Birmingham area, sold the station to MCL/MCM-INC, a subsidiary of Sheridan Broadcasting. On September 14, 2006, Sheridan Broadcasting restructured its radio stations, and WATV was put under the control of MCL/MCM ALABAMA, LLC.

References

External links

FCC History Cards for WATVWATV official website
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{{AM Stereo radio stations in the United States ATV Radio stations established in 1958 Urban contemporary radio stations in the United States 1958 establishments in Alabama

History of WATV

See also

References

External links