W298BG gets CP to change COL to Albertville, and move… out of Albertville.

For many of the entries on the translators page of ABMP, you may have noticed that I sometimes that to the city of license for a translator, I sometimes add another community name in parenthesis.  For example:

Blue Mountain (Albertville)

This is because the COL for a translator need not resemble its actual location or even its service area under some circumstances.  For the above, the translator W298BG, which relays local AM WAVU, is licensed to the Blue Mountain community but actually serves Albertville.  Blue Mountain is actually a suburban area of Anniston and nowhere near Albertville.

At some point translator owners will eventually change their COL to reflect the new location.  W298BG has done just this; they have received permission to change COL from Blue Mountain to Albertville.  Except, with their change to Albertville, they're actually moving the transmitter site outside Albertville, to a point well east of Sardis City, near I-59.  It is within the 2 mv/m coverage of WAVU and also within the 25 mile limit imposed by the FCC for translators, but will greatly improve coverage of WAVU's gospel music format towards Gadsden.

The translator will likely still cover Albertville well while adding a lot of Gadsden to the service area.  It will be co-located on the WQSB stick.

WFGX, a Selma translator and a Kiss for the Shoals…

A few quick tidbits of radio information for this Friday evening…  First and foremost WWFA St. Florian has finally debuted its actual format: CHR.  They've picked up the "Kiss FM" branding and signed on with a lengthy robotic voice countdown, followed by a slam of the competition, read with a bad Casey Kasem impersonation.  The competition is WMSR 94.9, licensed to the Tennessee town of Collinwood, which is why it isn't listed on this site.  (Perhaps it is time to include The Shoals as a metro area?)

In translator news, Selma-area W232AN has received a construction permit to move a bit further from Selma and relicense to the community of Suttle.  The power will remain the same but the height will be taller, so coverage shouldn't be affected that much in the Selma area.  Not that this matters as the translator has been silent for a while.  The current location is on CR-27 in Dallas County, between AL-14 and US-80.  The new site is further up AL-14 near the intersection with CR-6.

Finally, for our friends in Mobile, TV station WFGX has added another subchannel to its matrix.  35.3 debuted The Country Channel today.  It's all country music videos, complementing 35.2, which carries general music channel The Cool TV.

W286AQ makes another move closer to the Birmingham metro

W286AQ (105.1 MHz) started out in the Tuscaloosa area and had moved on to West Blocton when I first began keeping tabs on its whereabouts.  It's now making another move, this time to a site just west of Wilton, a small community on AL-25 near Montevallo.

It's the same frequency and power (250 watts).  Will this be it's final resting place?  Who knows, but this one is worth keeping an eye on.  Lots of small AMs like WBYE Calera could use a boost, not to mention WHPH "Peach 97.7" out of Chilton County.

WGAD and WJBY to switch… again.

The Gadsden Times is reporting that WGAD and WJBY will switch frequencies again.  The two stations switched frequencies several years ago, so this will put each set of calls back on its "original" station.  The oldies of WGAD is also expected to move to 1350 and sports to 930.  The 930 frequency is expected to go dark for a short time, however, while the studio is relocated.

The switch is scheduled for Sunday 17 October, however as I will likely be out of town on that date, changes have already been made to the AM section of the website.

A few updates for the first of October

First, in the LPFM world.  W286BV has received a construction permit to move from one rural area to another.  The currently licensed site is halfway between Greensboro and Moundville in Hale County.  The construction permit is for placement on the tower that currently houses WTUG and WFFN, in southern Tuscaloosa County.

Notice that neither is anywhere near the city of license, Demopolis.  Such is life for translators.

In low power digital TV, two new construction permits have been issued.  The first is for W28DX-D to Tuscaloosa.  It's authorized 2 kW from the site of WZBQ and WALN in Pickens County, south of Carrollton.  This station is licensed to King Forward, a spectrum reseller, so chances are it won't be built out unless they sell the license on to someone else.

Columbus, Georgia also scores a new entry, with W29EA-D.  This station will burn up the dial with a whopping 6 watts of authorized digital power.  Wow, I know.  It's shown to be emanating from an existing tower south of Crawford Road (US-80) west of Phenix City. It's licensed to Three Angels Broadcasting Network (3ABN) and that is likely what they will carry should it be built out.

All profiled should be updated now…

The last 100 profiles needing to be updated with Wiki, Radio-Locator, FCC and map links have been uploaded.  Fingers crossed that there are no orphans hiding anywhere.  In the event anyone comes across a bad map link or missing data, please contact me and let me know!

Also, the search is offline for some reason.  Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

More updates…

All the city-specific pages should now be up and running with full links to Wikipedia, Radio-Locator, the FCC and RECnet.  I tried to add as many street views as I could, too.  If you find a good view of a tower or studio in Google Street View you want linked on the site, here's how to send the exact shot you're looking at:

First, go into street view and select the shot you want to send.

Next,  click the blue "Link" in the upper right hand of the map screen.  Highlight and copy the URL under "e-mail or IM" and paste that into an e-mail.  Easy peasy!

I'll keep working on the remaining AM stations that haven't been updated, mostly ones between 900 and 1700 kHz.  They should be finished sometime before the year 2030. ;)