Local Mobile, AL Station Changes Hands (Silent?)

(Not related to KAAY, but...)

You all know my penchant toward locally-owned "mom-n-pop" stations...in talking with local newsman Charlie Moss (no relation to Wayne Moss), I found that another local Mobile, AL station has gone silent.  WLVV, "Victory 1410" has sold to a Fairhope, AL (just across Mobile Bay) lay- Catholic group, Alabama-based Archangel Communications.  So far, the station has been silent over the last month-and-a-half and the Catholic church has been seeking donations to get the station going again.  It is reported that the new call letters are WNGL; maybe we can be listeneing for the start-up and, if possible, get a QSL card or verification from a "new one"?

This particular station, it is said, has been on the air since 1930.  I remember it being WUNI, a great country & western station and WKRG-AM; when it was the latter, it blanketed the Gulf Coast.  The station and two towers sit in a salt march between the old Causeway and the newer Bayway between Mobile and Baldwin Counties.  At one time, a fellow Ham told me that he tried to convince the local Amateur Radio club to buy it when it went silent years ago and it could have been had for pennies on the dollar.  It would have made an excellent low-band station for Ham operations and the building, although being on low-lying ground, is raised and would have made a fairly decent emergency operations center.  It has withstood and survived well all the hurricanes that have hit this area.  To that end, it was reported that this station went for a measly $125,000....

At least Archangel is locally-owned and the station didn't sell out to a tasteless, cookie-cutter conglomerate.  Archangel had been looking for a station for a number of years and snapped WLVV up when it became available.  In talking with another local Ham and commercial technician, he said the former owners of WLVV had let the station get into a terrible state of disrepair.  Some of us know that the signal was barely making it out of the city limits for some time.

So, here's to all the "mom-n-pop" stations out there...keep 'em running, folks!

Bud S. (staceys4@hotmail.com)