Just north of Pearson
Avenue, off Garrison Avenue in Birmingham.
Power (ERP):
1,000 watts 24 hours
a day
Antenna:
Omnidirectional
Other Information:
HD (digital) - off,
again
History:
This station started
broadcasting with 250 watts on April 19, 1942, licensed to Bessemer. This
station has always been WJLD (for James Lyndon Doss), but is now licensed
to Fairfield. The station's had some type of black-oriented format since
about 1944, and even had an FM co-owned companion (WJLN 104.7 FM, later
to be country giant WZZK) back before anyone knew what FM was. This station
never lived up to it's potential: at a time when it's other black formatted
competition were all daytimers (1220, 1320 and 900 AM) and it was the only
fulltimer, it should have been market dominant but wasn't. Doss' brother
James R. put Tuscaloosa station WJRD on the air, possibly at the same time
as WJLD. This station was at one time one of the better sounding
AM stations, running C-QUAM AM stereo. That was switched off when the station
switched to HD digital radio, the first AM station in the nation to do
so (pdf).
They've had an "on again, off again" relationship with the IBOC digital
system: it went off for a while back in 2006, and is reported off again
in September 2007. Hardware issues or listener complains? Who
knows, but they still run the HD Radio ads! In late October
or early November 2007 the station began airing on translator station W281AB,
licensed to Mountain Brook on 104.1 MHz. It's actually broadcasting
from the WJLD studios off Spaulding-Ishkooda Road in Birmingham, though,
making it one of the few Alabama AMs to snag an FM translator before the
FCC stopped issuing those types of permits.
