WABF Fairhope sold

I found this on today's edition of Tom Taylor NOW. WABF Fairhope has been sold to Eternity Media Group, which owns WERM-AM in Mobile.

http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=78b390ff9f5b002e3f050238c&id=4801227185&e=7639be0665

Eternity owns a station in Hattiesburg and one in Augusta. I think the Hattiesburg station is gospel like WERM. Makes me wonder if a format flip is pending.

So this guy just showed up in Mobile a year ago and bought WABB.
And he just bought WABF.

He's working his way up the alphabet.

I guess he couldn't afford Cumulus' asking price for WABD?

I talked to a friend this afternoon who mentioned this sale, and he says that Pugh's stations are all gospel, so I expect an end to the America's Best Music format sometime in the near future. If that happens, it'll be another nail in the coffin of unique local radio. As if we need more religious crap on the radio here.

Overkill is what I smell on this. When you have too much of one thing, in a certain area, someone will take a hit and be forced to change. I don't look for this station to stick with Gospel very long. Baldwin County has enough Gospel, in my humbled view, to help feed their populace with the Word.

Dan <><

The buyer is not going to change the format. It will stay adult standards. In the agreement (per the FCC site) he is required to move the station. It appears that he is going to move it to his current plant at WERM and use the directional array to maintain 5 mv/m contour over Fairhope to keep the city of license.

I'm glad to hear that. Hope Mr. Zach will be too.

Dan <><

thegulfcoast said:

The buyer is not going to change the format. It will stay adult standards. In the agreement (per the FCC site) he is required to move the station. It appears that he is going to move it to his current plant at WERM and use the directional array to maintain 5 mv/m contour over Fairhope to keep the city of license.

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That's good to know, thanks for sharing!

I'm in Foley and can't pick up WABF reliably to save my life, so I expect nothing to change if it moves to Mob Town. I was recently gifted a nice AM tuned loop that I was able to use on WABF to null out all the noise and bring the signal level up so much it was like it was local!

WABF has a good signal even with just 1kw. That BE Transmitter coupled with an Omnia 3am is the best that you can get for the price. Excellent sound...hot modulation

thegulfcoast said:

WABF has a good signal even with just 1kw. That BE Transmitter coupled with an Omnia 3am is the best that you can get for the price. Excellent sound...hot modulation

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Well, I sure hope they keep the Omnia because WERM sounds horrible in its current state. WERM is a much weaker signal than I remember from the 90s when I'd listen to the talk programming on WABB on vacation in Gulf Shores. I'm not even sure it's audible in Gulf Shores.

WABF sounds good, but keep in mind I'm less than 2,000 feet from the WHEP tower, so all AM is depressed a bit in this area. WABF just happens to suffer more for some reason. I hear 540, 660, 840, 1000 pretty well, and 1330 is great if I get out of this immediate area, everyone else is pretty weak. Even 1270 is stronger than 1220 here. In fact I'd say 1220 is on par with 1110, strength-wise here, and the latter is all the way up in Bay Minette.

Glad to hear that WABF will be keeping the adult standards format. Yeah, it's just "off the bird" for the most part, but I listen to it quite a bit when I'm vacationing in Gulf Shores every year. WABF does have a good signal in Gulf Shores, much better than some of the other AM's from Mobile and Pensacola. WABF, WHEP, and WZEW are typically the only stations I listen to while down there. I used to listen to WBSR and their soft AC format before the station changed to sports.


I'm not opposed to any kind of Christian programming. However, there are quite a bit of Christian stations down on the Gulf Coast, so it makes one wonder how they all can survive. If the purpose of doing Christian programming is to share the gospel. how does it benefit listeners if your station isn't financially viable and has to go silent?

btw, I wouldn't necessarily say that Christian organizations that buy secularly-formatted radio stations will necessarily change over to Christian programming once the sale is complete. Depending on what type of programming is being offered, stations might opt to keep the existing format intact, but still use the station for ministry purposes. I do four online stations and none of them use Christian programming, but I use those stations for ministry outreach by incorporating the gospel within them. It isn't essential that I use christian music/programming to share my faith. So, with WABF, that may be the route that Eternity Media will employ in keeping the adult standards programming already in place. Sounds like a "win-win" situation if that is the case because their organization can use the station for ministry purposes, while listeners will still have access to the adult standards programming that has just about become extinct on the radio dial, for all intents and purposes.

passtheword said:

btw, I wouldn't necessarily say that Christian organizations that buy secularly-formatted radio stations will necessarily change over to Christian programming once the sale is complete. Depending on what type of programming is being offered, stations might opt to keep the existing format intact, but still use the station for ministry purposes. I do four online stations and none of them use Christian programming, but I use those stations for ministry outreach by incorporating the gospel within them. It isn't essential that I use christian music/programming to share my faith. So, with WABF, that may be the route that Eternity Media will employ in keeping the adult standards programming already in place. Sounds like a "win-win" situation if that is the case because their organization can use the station for ministry purposes, while listeners will still have access to the adult standards programming that has just about become extinct on the radio dial, for all intents and purposes.

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I agree with you totally

passtheword said:

I'm not opposed to any kind of Christian programming. However, there are quite a bit of Christian stations down on the Gulf Coast, so it makes one wonder how they all can survive. If the purpose of doing Christian programming is to share the gospel. how does it benefit listeners if your station isn't financially viable and has to go silent?

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I'm not opposed to it, either, to be clear. It just seems kind of silly how saturated that one particular genre is.

If I apply what I've learned over the years on this very forum, I can explain away my own problem: a) the Christian stations are overwhelmingly non-commercial and supported by charitable donations, therefore even if they have zero listeners they are still serving their purpose; and b) I keep hearing over and over how this area/market/region can't support the (commercial) stations it has, so there's no use wishing for more diversity on the dial.

I can also relate to the "ministry through secular programming" concept. One of my go-to stations on shortwave is KVOH out of the LA area, on 9975 kHz. When not airing outright religious programming, they carry a show of big band music that's interspersed with messages of salvation. It's low key and forthright and I don't mind the "preaching" breaks to get the programming I like to hear.

Christian stations (or religious stations for that matter) have a very loyal core audience, and have the donors that will support the operation. In this case ratings (and revenue) other than for operational expenses, doesn't matter.

So, it's been a while since there's been any activity on this thread and I wanted to offer up what's been happening since the last posts back in February.

As was mentioned before, part of the deal with WABF was that the new owners would have to find new studio/tower space. Last month they got the studio moved to a nice place on Church Street in Fairhope, but the transmitter issue is a bit more thorny. They got an STA to broadcast with a longwire from the WERM site in Mobile, but it did not give them a good enough signal in Fairhope (duh) so they are now back to operating from somewhere on a temp basis in Fairhope. No new STA has been filed yet so I dunno where the new site is, but I cannot hear them at all in Foley even with the loop so it must be incredibly low powered. From Mobile they weren't really any weaker than the full power Fairhope broadcast.

Last time I drove past the studio on Section Street, there was a for sale sign up in the yard and the tower was already gone. This also took the Goforth 106.9 translator off the air, and it's been off ever since; a silent STA was filed for it on the 13th of this month.

I've heard third-hand from someone at WABF that the plan to serve Fairhope with a directional antenna from WERM's site has been scrapped because it would have been impossible. They're now looking for a permanent TX site in Fairhope again. Good luck with that, those people are super-NIMBYs and the land is super expensive. I hate to be a negative Nellie, but I have a feeling this STA thing will be strung out until the FCC gets fed up and deletes the license because no suitable permanent tower site will be found with a reasonable cost.

WABF can't just apply to change the COL to Tillmans Corner and move back to the WABB tower?

tomservo said:

So, it's been a while since there's been any activity on this thread and I wanted to offer up what's been happening since the last posts back in February.

As was mentioned before, part of the deal with WABF was that the new owners would have to find new studio/tower space. Last month they got the studio moved to a nice place on Church Street in Fairhope, but the transmitter issue is a bit more thorny. They got an STA to broadcast with a longwire from the WERM site in Mobile, but it did not give them a good enough signal in Fairhope (duh) so they are now back to operating from somewhere on a temp basis in Fairhope. No new STA has been filed yet so I dunno where the new site is, but I cannot hear them at all in Foley even with the loop so it must be incredibly low powered. From Mobile they weren't really any weaker than the full power Fairhope broadcast.
.

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From what I read on WABF's Facebook page yesterday, that whole move was a disaster. Listeners are none too happy about being unable to hear the station that well anymore. Administrators for the page mention the possibility of an FM translator. Any idea which FM translator they are alluding to...or is that all just merely an idea rolling around in their heads for now?