WLAC

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For other uses, see WLAC (disambiguation).
WLAC
FCC
Facility ID34391
ClassA
Power50,000 watts
Transmitter coordinates
36°16′19″N 86°45′28″W / 36.27194°N 86.75778°W / 36.27194; -86.75778
Translator(s)98.3 W252CM (Nashville, relays WSIX-HD2)
Repeater(s)97.9 WSIX-HD2 (Nashville)
Links
Public license information
WebcastListen Live
Websitewlac.iheart.com

WLAC (1510

MHz
, as well as its AM frequency.

WLAC operates around the clock at 50,000 watts, the highest power authorized for AM stations in the United States. It is one of two

Spokane (which has since downgraded its night signal) and to the northeast to protect WMEX in Boston. Even with these restrictions, it can be heard across much of the eastern and central North America with a good radio. It has a three-tower array in the city's Northside neighborhood.[2] WLAC broadcasts an HD Radio signal utilizing the in-band on-channel standard.[3] Programming is simulcast over a digital subchannel of 97.9 WSIX-FM
and on FM translator W252CM at 98.3 FM.

Programming

WLAC carries

flagship station for The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
.

Weekend shows include

The Ben Ferguson Show. WLAC carries Vanderbilt University Commodores football and basketball
games.

History

Early years

WLAC has traditionally traced its founding to November 24, 1926.[4] That was the day the station made its first broadcast under the WLAC call sign. However, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records list WLAC's "Date first licensed" as September 11, 1925, reflecting the initial license date for station WDAD, which was consolidated with WLAC in 1927.[5]

WDAD was first licensed in September 1925 to "Dad's Auto Accessories (Inc.)" at 160 Eighth Avenue North in Nashville. It initially transmitted on 1330 kHz.

call letters chosen as an acronym of the owner's name. Studios were located on the fifth floor of the Life and Casualty building in downtown Nashville. WLAC initially operated on a timesharing basis with WDAD on 1330 kHz.[9]

In mid-1927 Dad's Auto and Life & Casualty formed a partnership for joint operation of their combined stations, as WDAD-WLAC.[10] The following November Life & Casualty purchased WDAD's interest in the combined stations, and announced that, effective November 21, 1927, the "call letters WDAD will be discontinued and the station operated only under the call letters WLAC in the future".[11] The November 30, 1928, issue of the Radio Service Bulletin therefore instructed its readers that, for the current WDAD-WLAC station list entry, to "strike-out call WDAD, as Dad's Auto Accessories (Inc.) is no longer joint licensee".[12]

On November 11, 1928, under the provisions of the Federal Radio Commission's General Order 40, WLAC moved to 1490 kHz, operating with 5,000 watts on a timesharing basis with the Waldrum Drug Co.'s WBAW.[13] The next year WBAW's call letters were changed to WTNT, after that station had been taken over by The Tennessean newspaper.[14] In early 1930 WLAC[15] and WTNT[16] were reassigned from 1490 kHz to 1470 kHz. (WCKY, on 1480 kHz in Covington, Kentucky, had been encountering mutual interference over much of Kentucky and Tennessee with WLAC, and was moved to 1490 kHz at the same time).[17]

On December 16, 1930, WTNT was taken over by Life & Casualty.[18] The next day WTNT, which previously had been allotted 1/3rd time on the shared frequency, ceased broadcasting, allowing WLAC to again operate a fulltime schedule,[19] and WTNT was subsequently deleted.[20]

In 1928, WLAC became Nashville's

NBC Red Network. In the early years of the station, WLAC provided local news, studio-orchestra musical features (accompanied by an in-studio pipe organ), farm reports, and some educational programming. Its main competitor in that era, WSM, became known as the radio station where country music
essentially developed and became a national phenomenon. When country music became a big business in the late 1940s, WLAC added early-morning and Saturday-afternoon country shows in an attempt to steal some of WSM's thunder. Otherwise, the station prided itself as a pillar of the community and placed emphasis on general full-service programs.

In 1941, with the implementation of the

Murfreesboro
. In contrast, WSM's lower frequency allows it to be heard at city-grade strength in all of Middle Tennessee, with secondary coverage of five states. WLAC's simulcasts on HD Radio serve in part to alleviate this shortfall.

Late night rhythm and blues

In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, WLAC was legendary for its quartet of nighttime

white teenagers. Radio historians believe that the nightly "Rhythm and blues" WLAC shows, in part, laid the foundational audience for the rock and roll
phenomenon that began in the late 1950s.

Nobles began the move, in 1946, to play what were considered at the time

double entendres
, which only increased the announcers' popularity among teen listeners. The deejays conducted the advertising sales on a "per inquiry", or commission, basis, meaning that the station did not rely on traditional ratings to gauge the programs' successes.

WLAC sales manager E.G. Blackman

African-American news radio broadcaster employed by a major, white-owned radio station, Don Whitehead. Whitehead, a graduate of Tennessee State University, began his career shortly after the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Whitehead started in the nighttime slot, announcing the news at the top of the hour. He traveled around WLAC's listening area to promote the historically black colleges and universities
and played a big role in increasing enrollment of African-Americans attending college.

Performers of later years, such as

African-Americans, as their Southern
, gravelly, drawling voices suggested. Richbourg and Allen in particular made frequent use of colloquialisms most familiar to their audience, thereby convincing many that they were "soul brothers," as a common expression of that day.

Other regular sponsors of the four shows included Randy's Record Shop of Gallatin, Tennessee, Ernie's Record Mart, and Buckley's Record Shop, the latter two of Nashville, all of which conducted mail-order business selling the recordings featured on the shows, and had affiliations with record companies in Middle Tennessee. Buckley's Record Shop folded in the early 1970s; Randy's Record Shop ceased operations in the late 1990s, although as of January 2019, its former building still stands. Allen and Richbourg also had financial interests in recording companies, artist management, and recording studios at varying points in their careers.

Each deejay's program lasted from one to two hours per evening Mondays through Saturdays, occupying roughly (with adjustments over the years) the period between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. Central Time. On Sunday nights, Richbourg or Allen hosted programs featuring black gospel recordings. Richbourg and Allen took credit for helping to start or boost the careers of artists like James Brown, Ray Charles, B. B. King, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin; Nobles helped the likes of Little Richard.

Other than the famous late-night shows, WLAC followed a fairly conventional news/talk (relatively middle-of-the-road politically, unlike today [see below]) and middle of the road music format in the daytime until the early 1970s, when new management attempted to program a Top 40 format, competing against ratings leader WMAK (1300 AM) for the Nashville-area teenage audience. This move, in particular, is believed to have prompted Richbourg and Nobles to retire, as they had no interest in conforming to a predetermined, pop-oriented playlist arranged by an outside consultant.

In addition to this, most markets in WLAC's night-time coverage area now had black-oriented stations of their own, most of which attracted the demographic groups that formerly listened to Allen, Richbourg, and Nobles' shows as their only source for R&B and

Muscle Shoals, and Memphis sounds favored by the DJ trio (Grizzard died in 1971) seem passé, and the hosts' audience, unsurprisingly, began to age, something that advertisers, focusing by then on youth rather ethnicity, almost always react adversely against. Changing tastes also brought about the end to record labels such as Stax
, which were major suppliers of music heard on the R&B/Soul shows.

To replace the retiring jocks, the station recruited young Spider Harrison, a native New Yorker who at the time was an afternoon

urban gospel
format, by moving it to the overnight/early morning hours.

In 1964, WLAC added an FM adjunct by purchasing

CBS Radio Network, WLAC-TV took the CBS TV affiliation from WSIX-TV (channel 8, now WKRN-TV on channel 2). WLAC-TV was sold to the Hobby Family of Houston in 1975, changing the call sign to WTVF, and is now owned by the E. W. Scripps Company
.

Talk radio era

On February 7, 1979, the station, under the direction of Jim Ward, station manager, and Robert H. Ruark, veteran talk show host and newly appointed program manager, pulled the plug on its unsuccessful run as a Top 40 outlet and changed formats to news and talk in daytime hours, making it one of the first stations in the Southern U.S. to adopt that format for at least a preponderance of its programming lineup. The new schedule, (as reported in The Nashville Tennessean newspaper's "Sunday Showcase") included news coverage weekdays from 6 to 9:30 a.m., Noon to 1 p.m., and 4:30 to 7 p.m., when the regular nighttime "ethnic music" programming began. The mid-morning and mid-afternoon talk show programming featured debate-type discussions with local or national figures via telephone and listeners calling in to ask questions or join in the discussions. Weekends followed the same basic format, and on Saturday mornings, a guest host was featured. Roger Frazier and J. Paul Robinson debuted the new programming as featured newscasters and talk show hosts.

Despite the new programming, Hoss Allen was able to keep his early-morning gospel music program and continued with it until his 1993 retirement from the station. Eventually, it became the only music featured on WLAC by the early 1980s.

In 1986, WLAC pioneered

sports talk in Middle Tennessee, when it began a two-hour-long afternoon drive-time sports show hosted by record company executive and sports fan Rick Baumgartner, along with former WSMV-TV sportscaster Charlie McAlexander, who resigned from WSMV specifically to take the WLAC job. Also, former WSM, WSMV and WKRN-TV
personality Teddy Bart launched his critically acclaimed "Roundtable" interview program on WLAC's morning schedule in 1985. The show, which featured newsmakers in Tennessee politics, later moved to several other Nashville stations before discontinuing production in 2005. Bart is now deceased.

Much in the same manner as in years past when network programming gave way at sunset to R&B music for a different audience, for many years after WLAC changed to news and talk, the station abruptly switched, without any warning to unacquainted listeners, at 8 p.m. Central Time (when the

Pentecostal preachers, seeking donations for their ministries, with the news/talk format resuming at daybreak (after the Hoss Allen show). This practice was discontinued shortly after the station's purchase by AMFM, Inc. in 1999.[26] AMFM was later merged into San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications, which became iHeartMedia
in 2014.

WLAC's longtime logo used from the late 1990s up until 2017.

For many years, WLAC was the Nashville home of the

IMG Sports Network
; the station has carried Vanderbilt games at various times in past years as well.

On September 21, 2018, translator station W252CM dropped its classic country format, branded as The Big Legend, and began to simulcast WLAC on FM, with the station's branding changing to TalkRadio 98.3. Along with the translator, WLAC is also simulcast on WSIX-FM-HD2.

In 2018, the station announced the addition of a new morning show, The Tennessee Star Report with Steve Gill, beginning September 24.[27] Gill ran into legal problems the following year; according to The Tennessean, Gill failed to pay $170,000 in child support, resulting in his arrest. He spent more than a week in the Williamson County Jail and resigned his position with the conservative news website "The Tennessee Star."[28]

WLAC, since 2021, has become the flagship of the EIB Network, featuring The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.

See also

  • List of Nashville media
  • Nathanial Dowd Gaston Williams
    , a pioneering Tennessee African-American disc jockey
  • Joseph Deighton Gibson Jr., a disc jockey who used mannerisms similar to Allen, Grizzard, Richbourg, and Nobles

References

  1. ^ "Facility Technical Data for WLAC". Licensing and Management System. Federal Communications Commission.
  2. ^ "AM Query Results". transition.fcc.gov. Retrieved January 29, 2024.
  3. ^ "Station Guide - WLAC". hdradio.com. Retrieved August 27, 2019.
  4. ^ Directory of Radio: Tennessee: Nashville", Broadcasting Yearbook (2009 edition), page D-504.
  5. ^ "AM Query Results: WLAC: First license" (FCC.gov)
  6. ^ "New Stations", Radio Service Bulletin, October 1, 1925, page 3.
  7. ^ "Programs Bring Throngs to Dad's", The (Nashville) Tennessean, September 25, 1925, page 2.
  8. ^ "New Stations", Radio Service Bulletin, November 30, 1926, page 4.
  9. ^ "Broadcasting Stations" (December 31, 1926), Radio Service Bulletin, December 31, 1926, pages 15, 18.
  10. ^ "List of licensed broadcasting stations arranged by call letters in effect July 1, 1927", Second Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission (for the year ended June 30, 1928), page 56.
  11. ^ "Life & Casualty Company Buys WDAD Station", Nashville Tennessean, November 20, 1927, page 1.
  12. ^ "Alterations and Corrections", Radio Service Bulletin, November 30, 1928, page 11.
  13. ^ "Revised list of broadcasting stations, by frequencies, effective 3 a. m., November 11, 1928, eastern standard time", Second Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission (for the year ended June 30, 1928), page 213.
  14. ^ "Alterations and Corrections", Radio Service Bulletin, June 29, 1929, page 17.
  15. ^ "Alterations and Corrections", Radio Service Bulletin, February 28, 1930, page 23.
  16. ^ "Alterations and Corrections", Radio Service Bulletin, March 31, 1930, page 14.
  17. ^ "Shifts At 17 Stations Set". Dayton Daily News. February 13, 1930. p. F-14.
  18. ^ "Radio broadcasting stations consolidated during the fiscal year 1931", Fifth Annual Report of the Federal Radio Commission (Fiscal Year 1931), page 13.
  19. ^ "WLAC Assumes Control of WTNT", Nashville Tennessean, December 17, 1930, page 3.
  20. ^ "Alterations and Corrections", Radio Service Bulletin, January 31, 1931, page 11.
  21. ^ "United States Assignments", page 1443.
  22. ^ "2015 Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame Inductees". tennesseeradiohalloffame. Retrieved January 29, 2024.
  23. Jazz Times
    . Retrieved May 28, 2010.
  24. ISBN 978-0-252-03290-5. Retrieved September 29, 2020 – via Google Books
    . His name was E. G. Blackman, and he was the [WLAC] sales manager.
  25. ^ "For the Record: Existing FM Stations: Call Letters Assigned", Broadcasting, August 17, 1964, page 90.
  26. ^ Broadcasting & Cable Yearbook 2000 page D-420
  27. ^ "The Big Legend Gives Way To WLAC Simulcast In Nashville". RadioInsight. September 21, 2018. Retrieved September 21, 2018.
  28. ^ West, Emily R. "'I'm terrified:' Court files reveal allegations of abuse against radio host Steve Gill". The Tennessean. Retrieved February 15, 2020.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=WLAC&oldid=1218757637"
This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article: WLAC. Articles is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license; additional terms may apply.Privacy Policy