History
WARF began broadcasting on March 1, 1957. It was owned by Hudson C. Millar Jr. trading as the Walker County Broadcasting Company and broadcast as a 250-watt station; Millar also owned WKPL in Cullman.[4][5] The station was sold to Radio South, a consortium of four men, in 1965 for $102,500.[6] By 1993, Houston Pearce was the full owner of Radio South; that year, WARF and WFFN, then located in Jasper, were sold to a new firm led by Houston Pearce, Voncile Pearce, and Vachel Posey Jr., the latter two senior managers of Radio South. At that time, WARF had a country music format with news and talk features.[7]
In September 1993, Radio South, Inc., reached an agreement to sell country music-formatted WARF to New Century Radio, Inc.[8] The deal was approved by the FCC on September 27, 1993.[9]
The station was assigned the call letters WTID by the FCC on January 9, 2003.[1] In May 2004, New Century Radio, Inc. (Vachel L. Posey Jr., president) reached an agreement to sell WTID to Joy Christian Communications Inc. (Ed L. Smith, president) for a reported sale price of $200,000.[10] The deal was approved by the FCC on June 28, 2004, and the transaction was consummated on July 9, 2004.[11] At the time of the sale, the station broadcast an oldies music format.[10] The new owners had the FCC change this station's call letters to WLYJ on September 8, 2004.[1]
The station was assigned the call letters WZTQ by the FCC on September 17, 2007, when it swapped with then-sister station WLYJ.[1] Just before the station was put up for sale, on January 29, 2008, the owners had the station's call sign changed again, this time to WJLX.[1]
In February 2008, Joy Christian Communications Inc. reached an agreement to sell WJLX to Walker County Broadcasting through their subsidiary, Wal Win LLC, headed by shareholder Brett Elmore.[12] Wal Win LLC agreed to pay in full the mortgage held against real property (with the pay-off being $300,000) in exchange for the station.[13] The deal was approved by the FCC on March 27, 2008, and the transaction was consummated on April 11, 2008.[14] Elmore, who simultaneously started noncommercial WJBE-FM, initially retained the Southern gospel format instituted by Joy Christian.[15]
On September 14, 2009, WJLX changed its format to oldies, branded as "Oldies 101.5", in conjunction with the launch of FM translator W268BM (101.5 MHz). At the time, the area had no station playing oldies music.[16] Unable to pay debts and financially insolvent, Wal Win sold WJLX to the Hattie Reese Trust effective January 19, 2017, for $150,000. The trust acquired W268BM, which was owned separately, at the same time.[17] The station's license was subsequently assigned to John Burdette upon the dissolution of the trust effective November 20, 2017. Effective May 1, 2018, the station was sold to Don Earley, who owns the Alabama Cable Network. In 2022, the station was honored by the Alabama Broadcasters Association for its continuous airing of Words of Truth, a religious program on the air in morning drive for 75 years and presented live every day of the year; that same year, the station relocated its studios to a site on U.S. 78.[18]
The station has gone silent several times throughout the last few years due to deferred maintenance involving the 1240 AM tower southeast of Jasper. In February 2024, the station's entire antenna, including the 200 ft (61 m) mast, and most of its transmission equipment within a building, was stolen, rendering it unable to broadcast at all over the AM band.[19] The station's request to continue broadcasting on FM was denied by the FCC.[20] According to Radio World, there are some commenters online and some connected to the broadcasting industry that don't believe the account of the disappearance.[21] On 10 February 2024, the condition of the tower site was documented on YouTube.[22]
