WJLD

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WJLD
City of license	Fairfield, Alabama
Broadcast area	Birmingham
Branding	WJLD 1400
First air date	April 19, 1942
Frequency	1400 KHz
Format	Urban oldies and blues
ERP	1,000 watts
Class	C
Callsign meaning	W J. L. Doss (the original owner of the station)
Owner	Richardson Broadcasting Corporation
Website	www.wjld1400.com

WJLD is an AM radio station licensed to Fairfield, Alabama that serves most of the Birmingham metropolitan area. The station offers talk and music programming targeted towards African-American listeners, including a mixture of locally originated talk programming and urban oldies music. The station is owned by Richardson Broadcasting Corporation, a company based in Birmingham. WJLD is the only broadcast property owned by Richardson Broadcasting.

[edit] Station History

Originally licensed to Bessemer, WJLD signed on in 1942 as an affiliate of the Mutual Broadcasting System. It was the fourth station licensed to serve the Birmingham area, following WAPI, WBRC and WSGN. Programming on WJLD initially consisted of popular music, news programs and radio adventure shows such as Superman and Tom Mix. In 1943, the station began selling airtime to people who aired black gospel music. Throughout the 1940’s and into the early 1950’s, the station had a wide variety of music programming, including country music, gospel music as well as rhythm and blues music.

In 1948, WJLD launched a companion FM station, WJLN-FM (104.7). The FM station originally simulcast much of the programming of the AM station, but by the late 1960’s began playing album-oriented rock music. In the mid ‘70’s the FM station assumed its current call letters, WZZK.

In 1954, WJLD began exclusively targeting African-American listeners with a mix of music and talk programming. Until the debut of WENN-FM in 1969, it was the only black-oriented station in Birmingham that broadcast at night, since the other similarly formatted AM station was required by the Federal Communications Commission to sign off at sunset. During the mid-1970’s, it was one of four AM stations in the Birmingham market competing for African-American listeners.

With the increased popularity of FM stations during the 1970’s and early ‘80’s, WJLD began adding more talk programming to their format and decreased the amount of current music they were playing. In 1989, the station dropped current music and became a full-time urban oldies station.

[edit] External links

• Official Website of WJLD
• Query the FCC's AM station database for WJLD