Technical Profile: WRYD

FM Technical Profile: WRYD

Station Name:: Revocation Radio
Frequency:: 97.7
Format:: Christian Rock/Christian Hip-Hop
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] County Road 42 in Chilton County, halfway between Jemison and I-65. Co-located with WPJN.
Power (ERP):: 13 kW
Antenna:: Omnidirectional
Antenna HAAT:: 459 feet.
Other Information:: 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC; : (inactive)
PS-[?]
Time-unknown
Text-[?]
PTY-[?]
PI-[?]
How's the Signal?: Signal is very good south of Alabaster, in Columbiana, Calera and Montevallo. Signal is poor over most all of Jefferson and northern Shelby counties. Listenable in most part of Hoover and some southern parts of Bessemer. As long as you're facing south on a hillside, you should be fine. The signal suffers from shadowing on the northern parts of the hills due to the low transmitter height.
More Information:: [FCC]; [FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
[Facebook]; [RDS] RDS display from the station on a GMC Yukon's radio, from the Peach era.
// WKRE Argo
// WKUA Moundville
Owner:: TBTA Ministries
History:: This station is one of the oldest FMs in the state of Alabama, believe it or not. Southeastern Broadcasting Company put this station on the air in April 1953, as WKLF-FM. Originally, it was going to be on 101.7 MHz, but a change early on had it moved to 100.9 MHz, running just 370 watts and broadcast from the site site as the AM, using a Raytheon RF-250 transmitter. Early on, it appears to have duplicated the AM's country music programming full-time. In 1966, the station moved to 97.7 MHz and boosted power to 3 kW as a full class A. They pressed a Gates FM-1C transmitter into service, broadcasting into a Gates FM-A4 four-bay FM antenna.

The station ended its simulcast with the AM in 1969, and changed calls to WEZZ in July of that year, picking up a Variety-type format. By the mid-70's, the format was Oldies. That morphed into a more upbeat Oldies and Contemporary mix by the mid-80's, when it flipped to a Country format.

In the fall of 2004 the station changed facilities — they increased power, antenna height & location and changed city of license from Clanton to Jemison. In January 2006 the station began touting a change to new calls and an oldies type format of 60's and 70's music, and debuted the format at the beginning of March as "The Peach".; .; The Peach was approved for a construction permit in August 2008 to move transmitter site west of Jemison and increase power to 13,000 watts. This improved coverage in Shelby county. As part of this change, Great South's WKLD in Blount County (also on 97.7 MHz) moved from Oneonta to near Huntsville to enter that market as a sports talk station. In March 2015 the license was sold by Great South Wireless to Peach Holdings, Inc, which is a sub-division of SummitMedia in Birmingham.

The station was sold to TBTA Ministries, owners of WKRE in Argo and a few other stations in Alabama, in May 2018. The sale price was $525,000. TBTA will be placing their Christian music format "Revocation Radio" on the frequency when the deal closes. The format flipped to Revocation Radio's format on 24 July 2018, and the calls changed from WHPH to WRYD shortly thereafter.