Technical Profile: WCSN-FM

FM Technical Profile: WCSN

Station Name:: Sunny 105.7
Frequency:: 105.7
Format:: Classic Hits
Transmitter Location:: [map] [bird's eye] [street view] Orange Beach: Alabama 180 approx. 2 miles before road ends, just off Walke Lane.
Power (ERP):: 5 kW
Antenna:: Omnidirectional
Antenna HAAT:: 246 feet.
Other Information:: 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.; :
PS-song by artist
Time-?
Text-THE VOICE OF PARADISE SUNNY 105.7 | song by artist
PTY-Adult Hits
PI-WCSN-FM
More Information:: [FCC]; [FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
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[Picture] Image showing the RDS text decoded by an Insignia HD portable, with the PI (call sign) and Radio Text fields.; [Aircheck] This "scoped" aircheck has had all the music excised (for copyright reasons), and includes all the commercial breaks over a 1.5 hour period on 23 August 2017. It features local ads, disc jockey patter, public service announcements, weather, traffic and more. Approximately 33 minutes in length. M4A (AAC) format, 44 MB total.
Owner:: Portside Media
History:: This facility dates back to an original construction permit first issued to Pleasure Island Broadcasting in October of 1991, as a class A station with 3 kW of power from the same tower site they use today, but at almost double the height. With existing stations on 105.7 in Troy, 105.9 in Atmore and Pascagoula and 105.5 in Bay Minette and Mary Ester, the station was tightly shoehorned in to Orange Beach without much wiggle room as to where the transmitter site could be located. Due to this limitation, nearly half the station's coverage is over Gulf waters. The originally assigned call sign was WXAH.

After control of Pleasure Island Broadcasting changed hands four times and the station went through a whopping five Construction Permit extension requests, the station finally filed a license to cover in November of 1996. The station debuted with more power (5 kW) and a lower antenna height (299 feet) than the original permit. The call sign had also changed to the now-current WCSN. (It technically became WCSN-FM in 2001 when a low power TV station in another part of the country also began using these calls.)

Early on, the station had an adult contemporary format, and did some light jazz programming on weekends. Despite being faced with over a dozen big city signals from Mobile and Pensacola, the station has done fine by being hyper-local to the beach communities of Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Perdido Key. The station has long been heavy with community involvement, too.

Pleasure Island Broadcasting sold the station in 1997 to Purchase Broadcasting (R. Lee Hagan, who has owned other stations along the coast over the years) for $800,000. Purchase Broadcasting later became known as Gulf Coast Broadcasting Company.; In the summer of 2005 the station began airing Spanish language music produced by a Baldwin-county Hispanic club called "Club La Revancha". The show, airing weeknights, is titled "La Poderoza". It may have been around this same time that the station's format began leaning more towards older AC and pop music instead of current hits; by 2011 or 2012 it was straight up classic hits, with a wide variety of music. At some point, the Spanish language programming was discontinued. Today, the station has a very wide ranging variety hits type music format, carries Gulf Shores Dolphins high school football and features a weekend program highlighting the area's many local musicians.

In July 2022, the station was sold by R. Lee Hagen's Gulf Coast Broadcasting to Portside Media (Marcus Carr and Tracey Williams) for $849,000.