Great locally owned Alabama Stations.

[J Alex Bowab]

I've looked at an old map showing night DA patterns for every station on 970 ...  WTBF's main nulls seem to have been occasioned by Louisville KY (north), Tampa FL (SE) and Alexandria LA (W-SW).

[Russell W.]

I've looked at an old map showing night DA patterns for every station on 970 ...  WTBF's main nulls seem to have been occasioned by Louisville KY (north), Tampa FL (SE) and Alexandria LA (W-SW).

Louisville was the strongest factor, at least where I lived (edge of one of the nulls).  Sometimes they walked on WTBF considerably ... there was one night I worked, and before I left the house I started a VCR feeding from a GE Superadio III, in the one spot I was able to receive it with a minimal amount of hash.   It was a special night, I recall, and wanted to do a full uninterrupted aircheck. 

Anyway, I was playing it back and during the last hour - over a song with a soft passage, a commercial for WLKY "News Channel 32" (ABC affil, Louisville) was clearly audible!   Crazy. 

Another couple of factors endangering directionals: real estate values, city growth (i.e. sprawl now filling a null area, and much of these residents are your P1s), and - especially - the engineers who have the experience with setting up directional patterns are retired and dying off.  I can't imagine a whole lot of the new breed of radio engineer possessing this kind of knowledge ... and those who do are at the larger AMs. 

--Russell

[musiconradio.com]

Not an Alabama station, but this is how small market radio should be.

http://www.kare11.com/Land_of_10000_stories/article/%20952316/57/Land-of-10000-Stories-Maynards-voice-is-heart-of-Madison

[jwgreek8606]

We should add WAAO in Andalusia to the list.  It's still locally owned and operated

[Countrymusiclover90]

WCKF Alabama 100.7 seems to be locally owned and operated. They do statewide and local news daily, they have a Tradeline show from 9-10 AM and local DJ's from the Ashland/Lineville area. Also WTDR Thunder 92.7 is locally owned and features a local Morning show and has local DJ's throughout the day. In fact one of their slogans is "Live and Local". Also, it may have been mentioned already, but WCKA Alabama 810 AM is locally owned and also features local news and local DJ's throughout the day.

[Snozz]

Also they do things like read the obituaries in morning and afternoon drive and call it "news". I get it, this kind of thing was cute in the 60s, but not anymore.

You gotta keep in mind that, more often than not, Obituaries are an important part 0f a station's revenue stream. Of the six stations I've worked at, three ran obits twice a day- for pay.

They may not be a big part of the cash flow, but they are a pretty reliable part of the cash flow.
And they're a lot cheaper than paying a news guy, too, come to that.