Technical Profile: WTOT

AM Technical Profile: WTOT

Frequency:: 980
Format:: Oldies
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] On Edgewood Drive in west Marianna, south of US-90.
Power (ERP):: Day: 1 kW; Night: 340 watts
Antenna:: 1 tower
Other Information:: 0.5 mV/m Daytime Groundwave Service Contour from the FCC's Public Files
[FCC]
[FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
[Facebook]
[Article] From the Jackson County Floridian on the storm damage to the radio station, with pictures.
[Studio] Street View imagery for the station's studio on US-90 in Marianna.; Simulcast with WTOT-FM, Graceville, FL.
Owned by Jackson Radio Group, LLC.
// W271DM Marianna, FL
History:: Appears to have been put on by J. Dige Bishop (as The Chipola Corporation?) in September 1958, who started several stations in Alabama.; This station has had a troubled recent history due to transmitter problems, and has been off the air or running at low power. In 2008 the station ran into more troubles when the general manager and part-owner of the station was found dead (of natural causes) in his home.; For years the station carried Citadel's Timeless Standards satellite format, but with that network shutting down, the owners opted to go with Christian Contemporary music programming. Also going by the wayside is the six day a week local R&B show hosted by local musician Melvin “Smokehouse” Moore. The switch was scheduled for the first of February 2010.

Ownership of this station was transferred from BRO Management, Inc. to Jackson Radio Group, LLC in April 2015. The station had been off the air for most of 2015 but was reported on Wikipedia to be back on with an urban contemporary format as of May 2015. A local report from April 2016 shows the station to be silent (again?) More than likely it never came back on at all; it was reported that a copper theft kept the station off even after the current owners installed a new transmitter. The station was reported to be finally back on the air as of January 2017, simulcasting the Westwood One "Good Time Oldies" format of WTOT-FM. It didn't even made it a month before straight-line winds from a line of thunderstorms broke the tower in half, taking the AM and FM sister WJAQ off the air once again. The station was back on the air (again) in mid-March.

The station was granted a construction permit for a new translator on 102.1 MHz in Marianna in early December 2018. That facility filed a license to cover in December 2021, but it wasn't approved until the end of January 2022 by the FCC for some reason.

In June of 2020, the station changed call sign to WTID. This call sign had formerly been on a struggling lower powered FM station in Thomaston, Alabama, and before that, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In August 2020, the call sign changed back to WTOT. Concurrently, the WTID call sign moved to WTOT-FM.