Technical Profile: WANG

AM Technical Profile: WANG

Frequency:: 1490
Format:: Variety Hits
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] Approx 1/2 mile north of US 98, near Debuys Road between Gulfport and Biloxi.
Power (ERP):: Day: 1 kW
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]
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[Pictures] On this Mississippi Memories page for the Buena Vista Hotel, there are postcard images showing the motel extension on the south side of the beach road, next to the tower for the station.; // W278CE Biloxi
// WTNI Biloxi; Owned by Telesouth Communications
History:: WLOX Broadcasting Company (J. S. Love, Jr. and his wife) received a permit for a new broadcast station in 1947 on 1490 kHz, as a 250 watt fulltime allocation. It signed on in 1948 as WLOX (biLOXi), with studios and transmitter across from the Buena Vista Hotel on Beach Boulevard in the West Beach part of Biloxi, near where Caillavet Street meets US-90. Today, this is the site of the Beau Rivage Casino. In 1957, the station received a permit to move the tower a few hundred feet south due to construction of a beachside motel addition to the Buena Vista Hotel across the road. This put the tower virtually in the ocean! A postcard image of the tower is available in the "Other Information" section via the Mississippi Memories page. In late 1959, the station upgraded to 1 kW fulltime with a Gates BC-250T.

The station spawned the city's only VHF TV station in 1964, putting WLOX-TV on the air on channel 13. The studios moved to 700 West Jackson Street in Biloxi in 1969. Around this time, the station had a Top 40 music format. Hurricane Camille destroyed the transmitter tower (along with much of the rest of Biloxi) in 1969, forcing the station off the air while repairs were made.

The transmitter site moved to the current location (see above) in the fall of 1972, which hurt the coverage area. Not only is the ground conductivity poor in this part of the area but some of the ground radials are under the WLOX-TV studio building. The station faced an opposition to the license renewal in 1976 over allegations of racial discrimination in employments and failure to uphold the Communications Act. The renewal was approved. By the end of the decade, the station had dropped Top 40 due to FM competition and moved to a Middle of the Road (MOR) music format.

The company sold the AM off in 1982 to La Terr Broadcasting Corporation, who flipped it to a Big Band format with the WBND calls (big BaND). The station was sold again in 1985 to Contemporary Communications, who kept the format (via a satellite fed format) but changed calls to WMTX in November 1985. In November 1986, the calls changed again, to WXLS, matching WXLS-FM that Contemporary acquired the year before.

KZ Radio Ltd. acquired the station along with WXLS-FM in 1990 for $50,000, and flipped the format to Light Adult Contemporary in 1993 as WXBD. The station was sold to Gulf Coast Radio Partners in 1997. That company was folded into Triad Broadcasting in 1999.

Triad flipped the station to sports sometime between 2003 and 2005, with ESPN Sports. It began simulcasting on WTNI 1640 for better coverage by the summer of 2011. That September a third partner entered the simulcast when "Hank" WUJM on 96.7 MHz joined. It left the simulcast in September 2014.

Alpha Media acquired the Triad stations in 2013. They brought in a translator from Tallulah, Louisiana and put it on the air at 103.5 MHz from the 1490 tower in October 2016. In January 2018, the station's call sign changed from WXBD to WANG. Yes, really.

The station was sold, along with most of the rest of the Alpha Media cluster in Biloxi, to Telesouth Communications for $2.5 million in December 2018. At the start of March 2019, the station flipped to Classic Country as "103.5 The Possum".

In December 2020, the station launched a new format called "106.3 Casino Radio", featuring Traveler's Information on the local gambling scene. The translator, which had been on 103.5, had only run a hair over 9 watts and had limited coverage. With the change to 106.3 MHz, the power jumped to 250 watts from one of the WROA AM towers in Biloxi, giving it a much larger coverage area.

The Traveler's Information format was dumped in October 2021 for Variety Hits, bringing back the long-running "Bob FM" moniker to the market.