WATV (AM)

WATV

File:WATV-AM logo.png
Birmingham, Alabama
Frequency	900 kHz C-QUAM AM stereo
Branding	900 Gold
Programming
Format	Urban Oldies
Ownership
Owner	Sheridan Broadcasting (MCL/MCM Alabama, LLC)
History
First air date	1946 (as WKAX)
Former call signs	WKAX (1946-?) WLBS (?-1958)
Technical information
Facility ID	5356
Class	D
Power	845 watts (day) 158 watts (night)
Transmitter coordinates	33°32′11″N 86°53′03″W
Links
Webcast	Listen Live
Website	900goldwatv.com

WATV (900 AM, "900 Gold") is a radio station licensed to Birmingham, Alabama. Its daytime power is 845 watts, and during nighttime, it transmits with 158 watts. WATV is an urban oldies music station, specializing in soul, R&B, disco, and early hip-hop from the 1950s through the 1970s. It is owned by MCL/MCM ALABAMA, LLC, a subsidiary of Sheridan Broadcasting.

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-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 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 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. Erksine Faush 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.

See also

• WNET Channel 13, a Newark, New Jersey, television station which formerly held the WATV callsign.

External links

• WATV official website
• WATV in the FCC AM station database
• WATV in Nielsen Audio's AM station database
• Radio/TV page of Birmingham Rewound