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WBHM

WBHM (90.3 FM) is a non-commercial public radio station in Birmingham, Alabama. The station is licensed to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where it maintains its radio studios on 11th Street South. WBHM features programming from NPR, American Public Media and Public Radio Exchange. On weekdays, it carries news and information programming, with classical music heard late nights, seven days a week. Weekend programming includes public radio shows such as Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, On The Media, The Moth Radio Hour and Travel with Rick Steves, as well as Bluegrass music and New Age music.

WBHM has an effective radiated power (ERP) of 32,000 watts. The transmitter is in Vulcan Park, amid towers for other Birmingham-area FM and TV stations. It broadcasts using HD Radio technology. On a digital subchannel, it operates the Alabama Radio Reading Service for blind and visually impaired listeners. Articles from the Birmingham News and popular magazines are read on the service. WBHM programming is also heard on 99 watt FM translator W291DC at 106.1 MHz in Birmingham.

Even though Huntsville beat Birmingham, the state's largest city in 1976 (in population), in getting Alabama's first public radio station in October 1976 (the present WLRH), WBHM did not follow far behind, beginning operations on December 5. WBHM became Birmingham's full-time classical music station since the demise of a commercial FM outlet, WSFM, which gave way to the present WDJC-FM in 1968.

By the 1990s, WBHM discontinued local classical hosts. It switched to syndicated programming from the Classical Public Radio Network, a joint production of KUSC-FM Los Angeles and Colorado Public Radio, to provide programming in the middays, evenings, and overnight. Weekday mornings and afternoons were dedicated to news and information programming, largely from National Public Radio.

When CPRN shut down operations in 2008, WBHM switched to an all-news/discussion format in the daytime hours with programming from PRI and NPR, a move that several other previously classical-formatted NPR affiliates elsewhere have made in recent times. Classical music is now heard on WBHM after 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 10 p.m. on Saturdays and Midnight on Sundays. Also on Sunday nights, two long-running atmospheric music programs, Echoes and Hearts of Space, air on WBHM.

WSGN began operation as WEXP (for experiment) on February 11, 1975, primarily as a training facility for Gadsden State Community College's broadcasting department. The station was assembled using equipment donated by several Alabama radio stations and by Rick Maze of Birmingham, plus purchases from the State of Alabama Surplus Property warehouse. Construction was performed by broadcast instructors Don Smith and Bob Mayben with assistance from WBRC-TV personnel in Birmingham.

The station was operated by students and faculty for many years. When both Smith and Mayben left the school for other interests, new instructor Neil Mullen took over the station operation and a cooperative arrangement was struck with WBHM to provide programming.

The call letters of WSGN (for founder Birmingham News, the "South's Greatest Newspaper") date back to the beginning of radio broadcasting in the state, and were formerly located in Birmingham at 610 on the AM dial. In fact, there was a WSGN-FM in the 1950s which today is known as WDJC in Birmingham. The call letters were changed under Mullens' leadership when WSGN 610 AM was sold to a company that did not want to use the call letters, but did not want another station in Birmingham to be able to use them, so another deal was struck to rename WEXP as WSGN. As of 2013, the WEXP call letters are located in Brandon, Vermont.

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