Technical Profile: WTBF-FM

FM Technical Profile: WTBF

Station Name:: True Oldies
Frequency:: 94.7
Format:: Oldies
Transmitter Location:: [map] East of Elba Highway (AL-87), about 3/5ths of a mile, on the north side of Carson Waters Road (CR-6).
Power (ERP):: 16.5 kW
Antenna:: Omnidirectional
Antenna HAAT:: 405 feet
Other Information:: 60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.; :
PS-WTBF FM
Time-[?] Text-WTBF... SERVING PIKE AND SURROUNDING COUNTIES FOR OVER 50 YEARS
PTY-Oldies
PI-*bad code*
More Information:: [FCC]; [FCCdata]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
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[Studio] Street View imagery of the WTBF and WTBF-FM studios on Highway 29 in downtown Troy.
Owner:: Troy Broadcasting Corporation
History:: Came on the air November 7, 1997 as a MOR-influenced oldies station. Eventually moved to ABC's "Pure Gold" with their good times, great fun type oldies. Early in 2000 they moved to ABC's "Lite Rock 2000" format with easier soft rock music. This station has a big band/standards show on Sunday afternoons. According to a longtime station employee, they are live for about 8 hours a day, with ABC's Unforgettable Favorites satellite format the rest of the time. He notes that, as he celebrated his 10^th anniversary with the station, WTBF itself has just turned 59 in 2006, with the same owners the whole time. That's quite an accomplishment in this age of consolidation and corporate ownership! Congratulations!; When the standards format the station had been carrying went away in February 2010, the station switched to Scott Shannon's True Oldies feed. At some point the station moved from the AM site north of Troy to a site south of town off Carson Waters Road. When the True Oldies format went away at the end of June 2014, the station picked up the Westwood One "Good Times Oldies" format, which is similar.; .; More information historical information from a longtime station employee:; .; "On November 7, 1997, the FM signed on. The first program was "Thursday on the Rocks," hosted by Russell Wells. The MOR/oldies format continued and simulcasted the AM for about a year.; .; Buddy Johnson became sales manager in 1998, and moved the station into the satellite- driven format in hopes of increasing business. The Pure Gold format was a little too "rocky" for WTBF's 45+ crowd at the time, but they stuck with it. Also during this era, Mutual was sold to CBS. We became an ABC affiliate with the Pure Gold satellite programming.; .; On January 17, 2000, we became a "Lite 2000" affiliate, which later became "Soft Relaxing Favorites" and, more recently, "Unforgettable Favorites".; AM 970 maintains its initial approach -- lots of community news and views, talk shows, MOR music, gospel music on weekends, and a training ground for college students who want to be disc jockeys. FM 94.7, licensed to Brundidge, airs about 8 hours per day of live local programming, but the rest is devoted solely to Unforgettable Favorites.; .; Station revenues have gone up every year the past four years, since WTBF began carrying more sports and went to the beautiful music format during the day. The community really supports the station and likes the "mom and pop" aspect of it -- no Clear Channel or Cumulus buyout is very likely in the future, and that's just fine by us."; .; The building that housed WTBF radio from 1947-1997 was bulldozed the last week of March 2008 by Troy University, to make way for a new parking lot. I guess the old Joni Mitchell record said it best .. "don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".