Technical Profile: WUMP

AM Technical Profile: WUMP

Frequency:: 730
Format:: Sports
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] On Hughes Road in Madison, just south of Portal Lane and the Southern Railroad lines.
Power (ERP):: Day: 1 kW; Night: 129 watts
Antenna:: 1 tower
Other Information:: 0.5 mV/m Daytime Groundwave Service Contour from the FCC's Public Files

[FCC]
[FCCdata.org]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]

[Studio] Street View of the Huntsville market Cumulus studios on Lee Highway in Athens.; Owned by Cumulus Broadcasting LLC; // W280BA Madison
History:: For the early history of the station that was on this frequency previously, see the history for WVNN.

The station that is currently on this frequency traces its roots back to 1360 kHz, when The Great American Broadcasting Corporation signed on a 500 watt daytimer in 1983 with Country music. The original calls were WABT, a set of calls that had also been used before in Birmingham (TV channel 13) and on a station in Tuskegee in the 70s.

Changes began when the station was sold to Excelsior Broadcasting Corporation in 1985. With Athens-licensed WJMW applying to vacate 730 kHz for 770 kHz, WABT applied to move into the vacated 730 kHz allotment. In 1987, the station signed on the new frequency with an Urban Contemporary music format as "D-73", with the WDKT calls. This put them in direct competition with the market's big urban outlet WEUP; rumors of high ads rates and corruption in the offices meant that the station never truly reached its potential, and things were going downhill by 1989. It was off the air a good bit in the early 90s, and only came on with CNN Headline News occasionally. The license was batted around until it wound up with Phoenix Capital in 1991. They signed the station back on, again trying an Urban Contemporary format, as WKMW. When that didn't work, they tried rock. The station eventually went dark again and didn't return until June 1993, when it was back on with News/Talk programming as WBBI. The station continued to struggle and was shuffled amongst a few more ownerships before landing with Madison Radio Company (Carl Sampiere), who changed the format to Sports Talk. Sampiere sold the station to Tennessee Valley Radio (Bill Dunnavant). He kept the sports talk and changed the call sign to WUMP (UMPire). [As a side note, Bill Dunnavant is related to Homer F. Dunnavant, who owned WJMW. It was the station that vacated 730 kHz previously!)

In 2003, Dunnavant sold the station (and all his others) to Cumulus, who owns the station today.; It was reported in late October 2008 that the station has gotten permission to rebroadcast on FM translator W278AA, licensed to Madison. This gives Huntsville its first FM sports talk on 103.9 MHz. The translator was originally on 103.5 and rebroadcast the 93.3 station out of Tullahoma, Tennessee.; On 2 January 2013, the station picked up CBS Sports Radio affiliation.

In mid-January 2018 the station's 103.9 MHz translator dropped its directional antenna setup. In June of 2018 the station won a construction permit for another translator, this one on 104.7 MHz. That permit eventually expired, unbuilt.

CBS Sports Radio rebranded to Infinity Sports Network on 15 April 2023.