WERC

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WERC
City of license	Birmingham, Alabama
Broadcast area	Birmingham
Branding	News Radio 960
First air date	May, 1925
Frequency	960 KHz
Format	News/Talk
ERP	5,000 watts
Class	B
Callsign meaning	A derivative of the station’s original call letters, W Bell Radio Company
Owner	Clear Channel
Website	www.960werc.com

WERC is an AM radio station licensed to Birmingham, Alabama. Its daytime and nighttime power are both 5,000 watts. In 1982, it became the first radio station in Birmingham to convert to a news/talk format. WERC is the home in Birmingham for the syndicated radio shows of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. WERC is owned by Clear Channel. Other stations in the Birmingham market owned by Clear Channel include WMJJ-FM (96.5), WDXB-FM (102.5), WQEN-FM (103.7), and WENN-FM (105.5).

[edit] History

The forerunner of WERC was the first radio station in Birmingham, and the second station in Alabama. In May 1925, WBRC signed on, broadcasting with 50 watts power at 1210 AM. Throughout the 1920’s the station increased its broadcast power several times as well as its broadcast frequency. By 1935, the station was affiliated with the NBC network.

In 1946, WBRC introduced the first FM station in Birmingham. Due to the lack of FM radios in Birmingham, WBRC-FM was not very successful, and was taken off the air two years later. In 1949, the owners of WBRC-AM launched the second television station in Birmingham, as WBRC-TV made its debut on Channel 4. The local owners of WBRC-AM and TV sold the stations to Storer Broadcasting in 1953, and four years later, the stations were sold to Taft Broadcasting.

The advent of television in the 1950’s caused network radio programming to decline. By the early 1960’s, WBRC was one of two “middle of the road” music stations in Birmingham. It continued in that format until 1972, when Taft Broadcasting sold WBRC-AM and FM to Mooney Broadcasting. Taft retained ownership of the TV station until 1987. The new owners of the radio stations changed the call letters to WERC-AM and FM. WERC-AM was christened “96-ERC”, and launched an all-out assault on the market’s leading Top 40 station, WSGN (now WAGG).

For much of the 1970’s WERC and WSGN were two of the most listened-to stations in Birmingham. The beginning of WERC’s demise as a Top 40 powerhouse came in 1977, when its FM sister station at the time WBRC-FM (106.9) was re-launched as Top 40 WKXX-Kicks 106 (now WBPT). By 1980, WERC modified its format to adult contemporary music and was known as News Plus 960, WERC. An afternoon drive sports call-in show hosted by future University of Alabama football announcer Eli Gold was launched in 1981. Competing unsuccessfully against WSGN and WAPI-AM as an adult contemporary station, WERC dropped music in 1982 and adopted its present news-talk format, which it continues with today.

[edit] External links

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