WVNA (AM)

WVNA
City Tuscumbia, Alabama
Broadcast area Florence-Muscle Shoals Metropolitan Area
Branding Newstalk 1590
Frequency 1590 kHz
First air date April 5, 1955
Format News/Talk
Power 5,000 watts (day)
1,000 watts (night)
5,000 watts (day)
construction permit
43 watts (night)
construction permit
Class B
Facility ID 19457
Transmitter coordinates 34°45′24″N 87°41′10″W / 34.75667°N 87.68611°W / 34.75667; -87.68611
Callsign meaning W Voice of Noath Alabama[1]
Owner URBan Radio Broadcasting
(Urban Radio Licenses, LLC)
Sister stations WLAY (AM), WLAY-FM, WMXV, WMSR-FM, WVNA-FM
Website WVNA website

WVNA (1590 AM) is licensed to Tuscumbia, Alabama. The format is news/talk. The station featured talk programming and extensive local/regional news coverage with a local news department on staff. The station is owned by URBan Radio Broadcasting and is part of a six station cluster operated by URBan in North Alabama/Southern Tennessee.

The station ceased transmitting on December 15, 2014.

WVNA positioned itself as a radio station "where all sides have their say". Thus, the station aired both conservative and liberal talk show hosts.

The WVNA call letters stand for "(The) Voice of North Alabama".[1]

Presently, the station's News Director is Ron Jordan, Commander Chuck oversees the Weather department and Brian Rickman is the Program Director.

Overnight, the station broadcast the syndicated Coast to Coast AM hosted by George Noory.[2]

In late June 2010 WVNA and Shoals-area WLAY lost the lease on their combined transmitter site. The stations were off the air until a new site was located and facilities built. This station was transferred from URBan Radio to Kevin Wagner in January 2013. As of December 2014 the station is on the air but only on nighttime power 24/7. This station appears on the FCC silent list as of 12/14/2014, although it's reported to broadcast regularly. The station finally went fully silent in April 2015.[3]

On 7 December 2015 Kevin Wagner-led URBan Radio filed a pleading with the FCC to keep the license for this station and WLAY active, claiming to have found a buyer for both stations; the request was granted on the 15th of December. The stations collectively will have been off for exactly a year as of the 16th, which normally means they are automatically deleted by the FCC. As part of the request, URBan wants to return WVNA to the air from a temporary longwire installed on the WQLT-FM tower in Colbert County, with 2,000 watts. The station resumed broadcasting the next day, on the 16th, with rock music and WVNA-FM liners, although it is not a direct simulcast of the FM station. That simulcast is ongoing as of January 2017, when URBan filed an application to permanently relocate the station to the WVNA-FM tower nearby, on New Cut Road. That construction permit, which would decrease the night power to 43 watts, was granted on April 12, 2017.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 Nelson, Bob (2008-10-18). "Call Letter Origins". The Broadcast Archive. Retrieved 2008-10-31.
  2. ↑ "Alabama Affiliates". Coast to Coast AM. Retrieved December 31, 2011.
  3. 1 2 Alabama Broadcast Media Page


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