On Tuesday, February 26th, 1991, the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) accepted WHIL-FM’s application for a construction permit to move the station’s transmitter 5.1 miles east of the junction of Highway 31 and Highway 90 near Spanish Fort, Alabama (east of Mobile Bay), before granting it on Wednesday, October 30th. On Tuesday, October 13th, 1992, the FCC accepted an application to modify the previous application to have the transmitter located 2.5 kilometers northeast of Alabama State Route 181 and United States Road 31 near Spanish Fort before granting it on Tuesday, January 12th, 1993.
On Tuesday, March 31st, 1993, Exxon Company USA donated $5200 to WHIL-FM in advance of a corporate fundraising campaign led by 30 leaders of local businesses beginning on Thursday, April 8th, 1993, including a luncheon at the International Trade Club to honor participants. Representatives of the station had hoped to raise $15,000 in corporate donations, more so than the previous year for a total of $105,000, as the extra money was needed to complete the goal of moving the transmission facilities for the station. The total price for the move was $250,000, excluding rental fees of $22,000 per year for the tower.
In August 1995, the FCC granted WHIL-FM permission (“program test authority”) to broadcast from the former broadcast tower for WKRG-TV in Spanish Fort after the transmitter and antenna were moved from the campus of Spring Hill College. The location of the new transmitter improved reception of WHIL-FM's in Baldwin County, Alabama (where reception used to be inconsistent), Pensacola, Florida, and other counties in south Alabama counties where programming supported by public donations was not easy to receive (Pensacola was all ready served by a station supported by public donations: WUWF-FM). The change was also made to avoid interference from other stations nearby. According to the Mobile Press-Register, Jeffrey R. Stoll, the general manager of WHIL-FM, gave credit to strong financial support from his station’s listeners, including the folks who responded to a mail solicitation campaign in 1992, and grants from the Public Telecommunications Facilities, the Joseph Linyer Bedsole Foundation, the Alabama Power Foundation, the Mobile County Foundation, and the family of Alfred F. Delchamps, Sr., the founder of the Delchamps chain of grocery stores.
On Wednesday, July 22nd, 1998, WHIL-FM’s transmitter stopped broadcasting due to a piece of equipment failing; a replacement for the equipment was ordered by the station and shipped to the transmitter around 11:00 a.m. on the next day. On the morning of Tuesday, May 31st, 2005, WHIL-FM stopped broadcasting due to breaks in the station’s air dielectric coaxial cable transmission line, which was nearly 1100 feet long and wide by three inches. According to an interview with the Mobile Press-Register, Dennis Brown, a development director for WHIL-FM, said the damages came as a result of transmission line clamps breaking in the winds of a tropical cyclone named “Ivan” on Thursday, September 16th, 2004, followed by more clamps breaking over the course of several months, thus allowing the line to move and take more damage as there were fewer clamps securing it every few feet. Jeffrey R. Stoll said his station was exceedingly fortunate that workers from Doty-Moore Tower Services in Cedar Hill, Texas were all ready at the transmitter site after several weeks of installing transmission equipment to improve WKRG-TV’s digital broadcast signal. Work on WKRG-TV’s transmitter was delayed to allow the workers to help WHIL-FM.
On Friday, June 14th, 2005, Ray Kenney and Walt Coleman of Doty-Moore Tower Services, along with Terry Hammond, an assistant to the chief engineer for WKRG-TV, unraveled 1100 feet of transmission line to restore WHIL-FM's broadcast signal at 6:05 p.m. The installation of the line was scheduled for the weekend of (Saturday) June 11th, 2005, originally until a tropical cyclone named "Arlene" delayed it. According the Mobile Press-Register, Jeffrey R. Stoll told one of their interviewers the cost of the labor and equipment need to restore the signal was around $60,000, and by the time the station was broadcasting again, all of the telephone calls and electronic mail WHIL-FM received from members of the general public over the course of two weeks were all positive, including calls from persons who said they did not realize how much they enjoyed WHIL-FM's programming until it was no longer available.
(see part one, part two, part three, part four, and part six)
All Examiner.com articles about television and radio in Mobile, Alabama by the author are available in the Mobile TV Examiner section and the Mobile Radio Examiner section respectively. To learn about the most recent articles about TV and radio in Mobile, you may add distribution feeds for those sections to your Internet browsers (link for TV article feed and link for radio article feed) or subscribe to Examiner alerts for your electronic mailbox (link for TV article alerts and link for radio article alerts).
Comments