Birmingham - Lots of Spoken Word FM Stations

[Gregg.]

Birmingham is somewhat unusual in that it has four spoken-word commercial FM stations. Cumulus and iHeart have FM stations that are simulcasting their AM Talk stations. And Cumulus also has two FM sports stations...

105.5 WERC-FM ... Talk (Hannity, Beck, Coast to Coast AM) ... simulcasts 960 WERC ... iHeartMedia, Inc.

100.5 WJQX ... Sports (ESPN) ... Cumulus Media

99.5 WZRR ... Talk (Levin, Bongino, Red Eye Radio) ... simulcasts 1070 WAPI ... Cumulus Media

94.5 WJOX-FM ... Sports (CBS and local) ... simulcasts 690 WJOX ... Cumulus Media

In most markets, the big owners keep their FM stations playing music, since it draws a younger demographic. But in Birmingham, I guess the available AM stations need these powerful FM simulcasts.

 

[tomservo]

I poked around the format listings for some other southern cities and you're right, I don't see anyone else with four full power stations for speech programming, but there are some markets like New Orleans where some talk resides on translators that are pretty centrally located. I imagine Birmingham's challenging terrain for FM plays a part in why some of those aren't on smaller signals. Montgomery has just one talker (WACV) but two more speech stations on translators, one sports and one BIN.

 

[ThePowerCow]

WZRR and WJOX are not complete simulcasts. WAPI breaks away from ZRR for Dan Bongino (Cumulus' Rush replacement) 11-2 and the first couple of hours of Levin at 5. 690 I think runs Dan Patrick and Fox sports radio.

 

[tomservo]

I guess that is why WAPI and WJOX AM still show up in the ratings. WAPI manages to pull a 0.2 most periods, amazingly, while poor WJOX AM is Mr. Blutarsky (zero point zero).