AM Technical Profile: WXJC

Frequency:

850

Format:

Gospel, Religious, Talk

Transmitter Location:

Off Tallapoosa Street, just north of Tarrant City.

Power (ERP):

50,000 watts days / 1,000 watts night

Antenna:

4 towers day: light nulls to the north and northwest / 4 towers night: strong lobe to the south southeast, secondary lobes due east and northeast.

Other Information:

Owned by Crawford Broadcasting

HD

History:

This station is shown to be WTNB in 1946, as a Mutual affiliate. Was WILD in the late 50's. Under ownership of Bartell Broadcasting, it became the first major Top 40 sound for the city as WYDE. Bartell was one of the leading propagators of this format, having highly sucessful Top 40's in such places as San Francisco (KYA), San Diego (KCBQ), Atlanta (WAKE) and Milwaukee (WOKY). It's best years were pre-1963 before WSGN took the crown. At that time, WYDE had studios across from Vulcan on US 31; you could drive up, watch the DJ and make requests in person! The station later went country and stayed that way for many years, until FM competition won. It then went through several formats, including Christian music, oldies, nostalgia and classic country. The station had a long stint recently as a Radio Disney affiliate (calls were WMKI - Mickey) with it's children's format.

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The transmitter site is just north of Tarrant City. Originally the day power was only 10 kW, but was later increased to 50 kW. The night directional antenna pattern was directed south, a little too narrow to properly take in the eastern and western edges of sprawling Birmingham and suburbs. At some point the power was reduced from 50 kW days to about 9 kW, with 1 kW or less at night, leaving this mighty station with a very small signal that barely reached the suburbs.

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In December the station left the Radio Disney format and switched to a semi-religious oriented talk format with a "LifeTalk 850" slogan and the classic WYDE calls. Power was eventually back to 50 kW days.

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In mid-2000, the station dropped the "LifeTalk 850" slogan for "Talk Radio 850".

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Crawford Broadcasting aquired an FM Cullman station in 2002 and switched to to talk as WYDE-FM, and eventually the AM station migrated to a gospel format. In July 2002 WYDE-AM became WDJC-AM.

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In May of 2004 Crawford bought WQOP-FM in Dora and will be using it to simulcast WDJC-AM. They have applied to change the calls of both stations, to WXJC. In late 2004 the stereo was killed and bandwidth was chopped to <6 kHz in preperation for transition to IBOC.

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The stations simulcast until the spring of 2006 when the FM flipped to country. In early July of 2006, WXJC began IBOC HD digital broadcasting.

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In July 2007 Crawford's FM talker "The Source" flipped to oldies, displacing all the talk hosts.  With this move, it appears Crawford has blended the formats of WXJC and WYDE. Hank Erwin and Matt Murphy have moved here, making for a talk/gospel music/preaching hybrid.  WPHC changed back to WXJC-FM in July 2007.

Transmitter location: