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June 12-19, 2002An Afternoon in Huntsville, Alabama
In the space of less than two hours, we saw most of what this interesting little city has to offer - and now we're sharing it with you!
Before we even made the turn to Monte Sano Boulevard, we saw the immensely tall stick of Huntsville's NBC station, WAFF (Channel 48), behind a big gate and down a little driveway along the southern slope of the mountain. The FCC actually lacks a record showing how high above ground this tower stands, but extrapolating from the WAFF-DT (Channel 49) records shows that we're dealing with more than 450 meters of steel here.
Shown at right is the easternmost of the big ones, down a short side road from the boulevard. This stick is home to Alabama Public Television's WHIQ (Channel 25) and WHIQ-DT (Channel 24), as well as some Huntsville public school microwave facilities, it seems.
The WAAY calls have a distinguished history in the market; they were on radio for decades at the 1550 spot on the dial, as Huntsville's big AM top-40 voice well into the early eighties. WAAY radio eventually went dark and lost its daytime transmitter (and studio) site on Memorial Parkway in the heart of town, and 1550 later returned with a less-stellar signal from a site far to the north of town that was originally used only for a very directional night signal on 1550. It's now WLOR, doing R&B - and has no relation at all to WAAY-TV. The TV station does operate an Internet service provider, which explains why many Huntsvillians have addresses that end in "hiWaay.net."
Next door to WAAY is the transmitter of Huntsville's CBS affiliate, WHNT-TV (Channel 19), owned by the New York Times. This is another tall tower with a shorter radar tower next door - and you've got to love the very old lettering on those satellite dishes in front of the transmitter shack! But let's head back down the mountain for now and see what downtown Huntsville has to offer on this late Sunday afternoon, shall we? Memorial Parkway is a divided highway that runs north and south through town, carrying plenty of broadcast properties even in the absence of the WAAY radio facility that used to sit here. We get there by way of Governors Drive, one of the east-west arterials - and just a block or so from the Memorial Parkway overpass, we find the single tower of Clear Channel talker WBHP (1230) and the former studio building for it and country WDRM (102.1), which now make their studio homes over in Decatur, where WBHP simulcasts with WHOS (800). ![]() ![]() Just north of I-565 is a former bank building (complete with a drive-thru window!) that now houses studios for WAHR (99.1), WRTT (95.1) and WLOR (1550). Keep going north on Memorial and you're into TV territory. On one side of the street, in a landscape filled with shopping malls and retail sprawl, is the WAFF studio; on the other is the studio of Fox affiliate WZDX (Channel 54, with a tower south of Monte Sano that we never did get to.) ![]() ![]()
Downtown itself is nothing much to write home about, and we don't even bother with the other station on Holmes, classic country WTKI (1450), which later changed to advice-talk WHOH ("Heart of Huntsville" or something like that.) Instead, we head for the northwest corner of the city, looking for the last two AM stations in town. WEUP (1600) was already familiar to us through airchecks of its urban format, complete (back in the day, anyway) with shouts of "we-UP!" Today, WEUP has sprouted a mini-media empire, with the AM side simulcast on expanded-band WEUV (1600) and outlying WHIY (1190 Moulton) and a harder-edged urban format now playing on two rimshot FMs, WEUP-FM (103.1 Moulton) and WEUZ (92.1 Minor Hill TN) - and it comes out of a distinctly funky 50s-style building up on Jordan Lane, aka Alabama 53. ![]() ![]()
Keep going on Jordan Lane, as we did, and turn east on Stringfield Road and you'll come to three towers of daytimer WDJL (1000), which now does gospel but once challenged WAAY for the top-40 crown under the calls WTAK. (The calls live on at Clear Channel classic rocker WTAK-FM, 106.1 in nearby Hartselle...) Continue down Stringfield, turn left on Pulaski Pike and then left again on Drake Mountain road and you'll end up on a plateau overlooking town, amidst farmland and dirt roads and several FM towers. One carries country giant WDRM (102.1), another is home to AC "Star 99" WAHR (99.1) and Bible Broadcasting's WYFD (91.7, licensed to Decatur). (Also in town, though we didn't get to its studios and transmitter at Alabama A&M University, is a well-known set of New England calls. WJAB, late of Portland, Maine, is now on 90.9 in Huntsville doing jazz and blues for the public radio crowd, which it shares with Alabama Public Broadcasting's WLRH, 89.3 from the University of Alabama-Huntsville.) Just 90 minutes or so after we started the tour, we were done - and off to meet fellow DXer Tim Hendel for dinner!
Both LPs do a fair amount of local programming; WYAM is co-owned with WYAM (890) down in Hartselle, south of Decatur, and simulcasts a morning talk show in addition to some very low-budget local infomercials, while WTZT is part of the radio family that includes talk WVNN (770 Athens), sports WUMP (730 Madison, on the original WVNN facility), country WUSX (93.3 Tullahoma TN) and top-40 giant WZYP (104.3 Athens). WZYP's morning show gets a simulcast for several hours on WTZT-LP, from a dank gray-walled studio somewhere in that brick building across from our hotel on US 72 near the I-65 interchange.
From here, it was back over to I-65 and 90 minutes or so north to Nashville...and if you come back next Wednesday, you can see what else (in addition to WSM) the Music City has to offer the discerning tower hunter!
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