| City of license | Gainesville, Georgia |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Atlanta metropolitan area |
| Branding | "97.1 The River" |
| Slogan | Atlanta's Classic Hits Station |
| Frequency |
97.1 HD-2 for former WSBB-FM music |
| Translator(s) | W243CE 96.5 Winder |
| Format | Classic hits |
| ERP | 98,000 watts |
| HAAT | 483 m (1,585 ft) |
| Class | C |
| Facility ID | 59970 |
| Callsign meaning | RiVer |
| Former callsigns | WFOX |
| Owner | Cox Media Group |
| Sister stations | WALR-FM, WSB, WSB-FM, WSBB-FM, WSB-TV |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | 971theriver.com |
WSRV (97.1 FM; "97.1 The River") is a classic-rock-leaning classic-hits-formatted radio station that plays music from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It is broadcast from the Cox Media Group facility on West Peachtree Street near the Brookwood area (between Midtown and Buckhead) of Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. It transmits from a broadcast tower at the northeastern edge of metro Atlanta, which it now shares with sister station WSBB-FM, and a permit for a broadcast translator for WSB-TV on physical (RF) TV channel 46.
Contents |
The station took the WFOX broadcast callsign in 1972. It was a top-40 station targeting Gainesville, Georgia (its city of license) until 1985, when it moved into the Atlanta media market and switched to adult contemporary. From 1989 to early 2003, the station was oldies "Fox 97". In 2000, Cox Radio acquired the station from AMFM, which divested it in order to complete the merger between AMFM and Clear Channel Communications.
In February 2003, the station switched formats to R&B "97.1 Jamz", after briefly airing various sister station's audio from other Cox stations around the country as a stunt. The station ran with no disc jockey as a supplement for another Cox Radio property, WALR-FM (Kiss 104.1) which played older-skewing R&B, while Jamz was a mix of older R&B/hip-hop and current songs, targeting primarily 25- to 39-year-olds. The station's main competitors were WVEE and WHTA, with whom it competed for the coveted 18 to 34 demographic, which is the same demo that WFOX's rhythmic contemporary sister station WBTS targeted.
On January 1, 2006, the station flipped to "97.1 The River", a classic-hits station targeting people ages 25-54. The playlist is currently a mixture of the type of music heard on former classic-rock stations WKLS and WZGC, as well as Cox Radio's own WSB-FM. On April 17, 2006, the WFOX call sign was changed to WSRV. The WFOX calls moved to another Cox Radio station, 95.9 the Fox (formerly WEFX), in Norwalk, Connecticut. The "River" branding is a local reference to the Chattahoochee River. It is now fully classic rock, but without the 1990s hard rock or partial 2000s music.
On June 19, 2006, Lexie Kaye became the River's first on-air personality doing mornings weekdays from 5:30 am-8:30 am. Kaedy Kiely, previously of WZGC during its "Z93" days, became morning host on September 18, 2008. Other personalities include Dave Clapper, promotions director for WSRV and WSB-FM.
On October 5, 2011, it was announced that rocker Eddie Money would become the new morning host, effective October 10.[1]. Money would be released from the station in late December 2011.
WSRV is currently broadcasting digital radio using the HD Radio system, and simulcasted sister station WSB on its HD-2 channel until WBTS dropped rhythmic CHR in August 2010 to simulcast WSB as WSBB-FM. The former WBTS format is now heard on WSRV's HD-2 channel.[2]
Its city of license is Gainesville, Georgia in Hall County, although as one of metro Atlanta's first move-ins, it now transmits from the southern tip of Hall County, just across the line from Braselton. Its broadcast range covers almost all of northeast Georgia, from just southwest of Atlanta, and a tiny portion of upstate South Carolina. This includes Atlanta, Athens, Cartersville, Roswell, and Toccoa. Weaker portions of the signal include Rome and Dalton in northwest Georgia, Peachtree City south of Atlanta, and Anderson, South Carolina. Depending on radio propagation conditions, with no other stations located on 97.1 FM, and with a good radio antenna, the station can be clearly heard as far away as Knoxville, Tennessee and at times, Greenville, South Carolina.
The station has volunteered to downgrade to class C0 in exchange for moving its transmitter closer to the Atlanta metro area.
WSRV is also heard on W243CE (96.5 FM), a broadcast translator having Winder, Georgia as its city of license, and transmitting from west-northwest of Winder, about halfway to Auburn, Georgia. Licensed for just five watts of effective radiated power, it is owned by Davis Broadcasting of Atlanta. It was originally permitted in 2004 and started in 2007 by Radio Assist Ministry, a company that speculatively filed for thousands of translator stations and then rented or resold them for profit.
The station has a construction permit to move to the WSRV/WSBB radio tower, increase to the maximum translator power of 250 watts, and exponentially increase its height from 4 to 392 meters (1,286 ft). This will give it the broadcast range of a class-A station, while allowing Cox to circumvent U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) caps that prevent the excessive concentration of media ownership in a market, if the station relays a digital channel from WSRV (or is reassigned to retransmit another station). The translator was and will still be entirely within the main station's range, making it redundant if it retransmits the main analog audio of WSRV.
Davis actually owns a different station in the area: WLKQ-FM, which ironically has a translator station (W264AR) owned by a different company. That station transmits from near W243CE's current location, and is also upgrading and moving.
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||