Several years ago there was a pop song entitled “I Can See Clearly Now.” In the case of WANY radio station listeners, the more appropriate phrase may be “I can hear clearly now.”

After a few years in the works, a change came to local radio station WANY FM last Friday, October 12 when its position on the radio dial switched from 106.3 to 100.9–and with the changes also came more power output allowing the signal to reach places it hadn’t reached before.

The process in changing frequency and upgrading stations began a few years ago, the brainstorm of Steve Newberry, who operates a station in the Horse Cave area and will ironically now have the 106.3 frequency. The change involved a total of four area stations, including the local station, that first went on the air with AM only on October 25, 1958.

The past frequency was licensed for 2700 watts of radiated power–the station now operates on some 6000 watts and reaches out to areas in all directions, including areas such as Russell County, as far away as Campbellsville, Glasgow and Somerset in Kentucky and around the Crossville, Cookeville regions of Tennessee.

The new antennae was erected to the station’s tower beginning last Friday morning when morning DJ Hank Thomas signed off 106.3 FM for the final time around 8 a.m. Just a few hours later, at 12:30 p.m., long-time radio personality and “Voice of the Bulldogs”, Sid Scott took the microphone in the main control room and was the first to sign on the new 100.9FM.

Scott, one of the original DJ’s at WANY over the past 54 years, has seen many changes during his career with the station, including when the station first went on the air with AM on April 18, 1966 and was there when a totally new tower was put up in 1997 after it had been destroyed by a tornado.

Following the installation and direction of that tower, some areas, especially to the north of Albany, were somewhat blocked, causing signal problems.

Another irony when it came to the new antennae installation was that the chief technical engineer of Anderson Communications relayed to station owner Pam Allred last Friday when the work was taking place that WANY radio station had literally guided his decision to get into the radio business.

Charles Anderson said he had been at WANY back in 1958–at the age of 14–and met all the disc jockeys initially employed there at the time and was so impressed that it led him to get into radio. Those DJ’s were Scott, the late Darrell Speck and Welby Hoover.

Allred called the major change a “benefit to the community” and added several people had commented about the change and said they were able to pick up WANY for the first time in a long time from where they live.

Station engineer Robert Huddleston had been working for the past three weeks or so installing the new, upgraded equipment which was necessary to be in place and turned on when the new antennae became operational last week.

Huddleston also has long-time ties with WANY and several other area stations, especially in the Upper Cumberland areas in Tennessee.

Although the new antennae is in place and the power is booming compared to years past, there are still more subtle improvements ahead for the local station, including the eventual automation process, which will allow WANY FM to operate on a 24-hour basis. Allred said she expects a mix variety to be the music format once all changes occur.

Also, WANY AM, which will remain 1390 on the dial, will likely be switched to an all gospel format on the limited number of hours it operates (due to FCC licensing regulations) each day. Allred said that gospel and religious programming has, and will continue to be, a major part of WANY.

She also hopes to upgrade the weather capability of the station, allowing the latest updates in weather and storm information, even when no person is actually at the station, but use of automation for alerts to be issued automatically for any portion of the listening area.

Hopefully, the station will be able to obtain more news, including state and national news broadcasts in the future.