FM Technical Profile: WBZR
Station Name:
Hot Country
[map] [street view] Just west of AL-21, between East Avenue C and East Avenue B.
Nondirectional
Antenna HAAT:
60 dBu protected contour map, from the FCC.
PS-WBZR HOT COUNTRY105.9
Time-Present
Text-WBZR HOT COUNTRY105.9…
PTY-Country
PI-WBZR-FM
[FCCdata]
[Image] RDS display from an Insignia portable radio, showing the Radio Text and PI (call sign) fields.
[Aircheck] Audio from the 5 o'clock hour on August 29th, 2018, minus music and national commercials. Contains very little canned DJ patter, but lots and lots of dead air. M4A format; 9'40", 9.2 MB
Tri-County Broadcasting, Inc.
This station was put on the air in 1991 as an FM companion to WASG in Atmore. The calls were WYDH. The AM was country while the FM went adult contemporary. At the time it was one of the few radio stations in the nation owned by Native Americans. The station went through several ownership changes until the late 90's when it was sold to the company that eventually became Great American Radio Network.
At some mysterious point in history, the AM went silent and its country format moved to here, as "Eagle 105.9". Also around this time the simulcast began including Bay Minette's WBCA and Robertsdale's WNSI.
The station flipped from country to rhythmic oldies as "The Boss" in the late fall of 2001. That format was last heard on Citronelle's WQUA-FM. Summer of 2002 had the station back with classic country, but still with "The Boss" moniker. WNSI and WBCA tagged along for these changes, too.
In April 2004 the calls changed to WDXZ, which had been on the Robertsdale AM station previously. At that time the AM became WNSI. In October 2004 the station changed again, to WNSI-FM, simulcasting with the Robertsdale AM. The format was news, talk and sports but it eventually morphed into all sports with Fox Sports Radio affiliation.
In 2008 station owner Walter Bowen made news with a run-in with ASCAP. For more on this, see the station's Wikipedia article.
In May 2010 the calls changed to WBZR-FM, the Robertsdale AM became WBZR and the slogan became "The Buzz", with much the same talk programming from earlier days. Around this same time the station went through a minor upgrade in power, dropping a directional antenna for a non-directional setup, at lower height. This leaves the coverage virtually unchanged. Later that year, the station was the victim of a lightning strike and had to run on low power (500 watts) for an extended period, which reduced their coverage to the area immediately surrounding Atmore.
On 13 March 2011 the station's talk format disappeared and was replaced with country music, while the website was changed to a countdown clock. On Monday 14 March the station officially debuted as "Kix Country 105.9 FM and 1000 AM". This leaves the area without an outlet for such talk shows as Leo Laporte, Dave Ramsey and Kim Komando. In January 2013 the station, along with the AM in Robertsdale, were sold to 21st Century Broadcasting (Norma Jean Lewis, Bryan Covey). The station later fell into the hands of a company named Gulf Coast Broadcasting, who in turn sold it to Tri-County Broadcasters, Inc. in the summer of 2014.