WERM (1220 AM) is an American

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

licensed to serve the

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

Fairhope, Alabama Fairhope is a city in Baldwin County, Alabama, United States, located on the eastern shoreline of Mobile Bay. The population was 22,477 at the 2020 census. Fairhope is a principal city of the Daphne-Fairhope-Foley metropolitan area, which in ...

, since 1961. The station's

broadcast license A broadcast license is a type of spectrum license granting the licensee permission to use a portion of the radio frequency spectrum in a given geographical area for broadcasting purposes. The licenses generally include restrictions, which va ...

is currently held by Donald H. Pugh Sr., through licensee Eternity Media Group WERM, LLC. WERM broadcasts an

Urban Gospel Urban/contemporary gospel, also known as urban gospel music, urban gospel pop, or just simply urban gospel, is a modern subgenre of gospel music. Although the style developed gradually, early forms are generally dated to the 1970s, and the genr ...

music format to the greater

Mobile metropolitan area The Mobile Metropolitan Area comprises Mobile County, Alabama, Mobile in the southwest corner of Alabama in the United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census the metropolitan area had a population of 430,197. The Mobile metropoli ...

, including

Mobile County Mobile County ( ) is a county located in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Alabama. It is the third-most populous county in the state after Jefferson and Madison counties. As of the 2020 census, its population was 414,809. Its co ...

and

Baldwin County, Alabama Baldwin County is a county located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Alabama, on the Gulf coast. It is one of only two counties in Alabama that border the Gulf of Mexico, along with Mobile County. As of the 2020 census, the popul ...

. This station formerly broadcast a

tradio Tradio is a type of phone-in radio program formatted to provide a venue for listeners to freely advertise items they have to sell or trade. The concept is analogous to classified ads in local newspapers and most prevalent in the south and midw ...

show called ''The Gulf Coast Swap Shop'', local news, and select programming from the

CBS Radio Network CBS News Radio, formerly known as CBS Radio News and historically known as the CBS Radio Network, is a radio network that provides news to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by Paramount Global. It ...

History

This station began regular operations as WABF on August 12, 1961. Licensed to Eastern Shore Broadcasters, Inc., the station was originally part of the J. Dige Bishop Stations Group. It broadcast with 1,000

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s of power, daytime-only, to protect WGAR (now

WHKW WHKW (1220 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, featuring a Christian radio format known as "AM 1220 The Word". Owned by Salem Media Group, the station serves both Greater Cleveland and the Northeast Ohio region. WHKW ...

) in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...

, from

skywave In radio communication, skywave or skip refers to the propagation of radio waves reflected or refracted back toward Earth from the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer of the upper atmosphere. Since it is not limited by the curvatur ...

interference. Almost two decades later, Eastern Shore Broadcasters, Inc., sold WABF to Bee Cee Broadcasting, Inc., in a deal that closed on July 1, 1978. In March 1992, Bee Cee Broadcasting, Inc., reached a deal to sell WABF to Jubilee Broadcasting Company, Inc., for $350,000. The deal was approved by the FCC on April 20, 1992, and consummated on May 11, 1992. In February 1999, Jubilee Broadcasting Company, Inc., contracted to transfer the

for WABF to Gulf Coast Broadcasting Company, Inc. The deal gained FCC approval on May 5, 1999, and the transaction was formally consummated on May 20, 1999. In June 2001, the station applied to increase its nighttime signal strength from 4 to 30

s while eliminating the

directional array An antenna array (or array antenna) is a set of multiple connected antennas which work together as a single antenna, to transmit or receive radio waves. The individual antennas (called ''elements'') are usually connected to a single receiver ...

in use both day and night to reduce

interference. The FCC granted a

construction permit Planning permission or building permit refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. House building permits, for example, are subject to bu ...

for these changes on October 1, 2001, with a scheduled expiration date of October 1, 2004. With construction and testing complete in January 2002, the station applied for a new

to cover these changes. The FCC granted the new license on March 11, 2002. Effective August 10, 2016, Gulf Coast sold WABF to Donald H. Pugh, Sr.'s Eternity Media Group, LLC for $105,000. The station was granted

special temporary authority Special Temporary Authority (STA) in U.S. broadcast law is a type of broadcast license which temporarily allows a broadcast station to operate outside of its normal technical or legal parameters. In the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) st ...

in April 2016 to operate daytime only with 1 kW from one of the

WERM WERM (1220 AM) is an American radio station licensed to serve the community of Fairhope, Alabama, since 1961. The station's broadcast license is currently held by Donald H. Pugh Sr., through licensee Eternity Media Group WERM, LLC. WERM broa ...

towers in Mobile, and it began using that facility as of September 2016. The tower at the WABF studios on Section Street in Fairhope was later taken down. Although the new ownership moved the studios and transmitter, the format remained more or less the same, with a mix of softer oldies and standards. Within a month of beginning operation from the STA site at the WERM tower in Mobile, coverage issues in Fairhope became apparent and the station moved the temporary broadcast back to Fairhope, first from a location near their new studio in downtown and later from a longwire off Twin Beech Road, just a half mile from the old transmitter site. In early February 2017, the format and programming moved to

1480 in Mobile, while that station's gospel programming moved to this frequency. This change was reported to be permanent. On December 6, 2017, the stations swapped call signs, with this station assuming the WERM calls.

References

External links

* {{Mobile Radio ERM (AM) Gospel radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1961 1961 establishments in Alabama ERM