Technical Profile: WTSK

AM Technical Profile: WTSK

Frequency:: 790
Format:: Black Gospel
Transmitter Location:: [map] [street view] [bird's eye] [goKML aerial] East of where Fosters Ferry Road and 29th Street meet in west Tuscasloosa.
Power (ERP):: Day: 5 kW; Night: 36 watts
Antenna:: Day and night: 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 imagery of the Townsquare Media stations in Tuscaloosa, off Skyland Boulevard.; Owned by Townsquare Media
// W227DD Tuscaloosa
History:: Frederic M. Rosemore, Stanley Besner and Samuel J. Simon (as Better Radio Stations Company) were granted a construction permit for a new station in 1957, for a daytimer with 500 watts on 790 kHz. Originally assigned the WRBS call sign, it signed on in April 1958. Later that fall, the license was assigned to Tri-Cities Broadcasting Company, who changed the call sign to WTUG in October 1958. The studios were located at the transmitter site (see above) on Fosters Ferry Road. It appears that the station had a black-oriented format from the very beginning.

The station upgraded to 1 kW, still as a daytimer, in 1965.

Radio South, Inc. acquired the station in 1977. In 1979, the station upgraded power again, this time to 2.5 kW, still as a daytimer. Around this time, the company spawned an FM sister station, launching WTUG-FM in 1980. Shortly after the FM debuted, the AM's call sign changed to WTSK (TuSK, a reference to the elephant named Big Al that represents the University of Alabama's sports teams.) From that point through the rest of the 80s the station had a Gospel music format.

By the time the 90s rolled around, the format flipped to Rhythm and Blues. That format lasted the better part of a decade before the station returned to Gospel in the late 90s.

Radio South grew into a sizable cluster of stations, eventually became Apex Broadcasting and expanding outside of the state. They sold the Tuscaloosa cluster to Citadel Broadcasting in 2007. Citadel eventually morphed into Cumulus, and they are who sold their Tuscaloosa cluster in 2012 to Townsquare Broadcasting. In October 2018, the station acquired an FM translator.