City Pelham, Alabama Branding 102.5 The Bull | Broadcast area Birmingham, Alabama | |
Slogan Birmingham's Better Country Frequency 102.5 MHz (also on HD Radio) Translator(s) 94.9 W235BS (Birmingham, relays HD2) | ||
WDXB (102.5 FM, "102.5 the Bull") is a iHeartMedia, Inc.-owned country music formatted radio station licensed to Pelham, Alabama, that serves Birmingham and north-central Alabama. The station has studios at Beacon Ridge Tower in Birmingham (near Red Mountain) and its transmitter is on the west end of the Red Mountain range in Southwest Birmingham.
Contents
Programming
Syndicated programming includes After Midnite with Blair Garner hosted by Blair Garner from Premiere Radio Networks.
History
From its sign-on in 1962 until 1986, WWWB-FM was a small-market radio station that served only Jasper and parts of northwest Alabama playing country music. In 1986, WDBB-TV in Tuscaloosa erected a new transmission tower near the border of Jefferson County and Tuscaloosa County to enable its signal to cover the Birmingham area. At that time, WWWB began broadcasting off the new WDBB tower and dropped country music for Top 40. It was at that time that the call letters were changed to WZBQ, and the station was known on the air as "Z-102".
While Z-102 was very successful in the smaller Tuscaloosa market, it did not make a big impact in Birmingham; Birmingham had two other Top 40 stations at the time (WAPI-FM/I-95 and WKXX/Kicks 106) and Gadsden's WQEN/Q-104 covered most of the market as well. WZBQ continued with its Top 40 format throughout the rest of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. In early 1994, the format was changed to oldies, and the station was renamed Cool 102.5. In August 1994, new owners dropped the oldies format in favor of country and changed the call letters to WOWC. The station was known on the air as Wow Country 102 and began broadcasting from studios in Birmingham.
Wow Country was the first direct challenge presented to the Birmingham market's top-rated station, WZZK, in nearly eight years; however, due to signal limitations presented from broadcasting from a tower 30 miles west of Birmingham, WOWC initially enjoyed only marginal success. In 1999, the call letters of the station were changed to WDXB and the station was renamed Dixie 102.5, as more classic country songs were added to the playlist.
Two factors enabled WDXB to become a truly serious competitor to WZZK. First, the station began broadcasting from a tower more centrally located to Birmingham in 2002, enabling its signal to cover the entire market. Then in 2003, the station hired the popular morning-drive team of Patti Wheeler and "Dollar" Bill Lawson, who had been forced out at WZZK earlier that year. In 2005, 102-5 the Bull, as WDXB was known by then, finally passed WZZK in the local Arbitron ratings. Today, the two stations enjoy a heated rivalry and trade positions in the ratings.
In 2008, WDXB changed its city of license from Jasper to Pelham, Alabama.
Trivia
The call letters WDXB were originally assigned to an AM radio station in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which broadcast at 1490 kHz from 1948 to 1990. WJOC in Rossville, Georgia has since assumed the dial position and serves the Chattanooga market with Christian-oriented programming.