WCAH (AM)

WCAH (1150 AM) is a commercial radio station in Birmingham, AL It carries an all-news format and is owned by Audacy, Inc. The station's studios and transmitters are located at 12th Avenue South in downtown Birmingham.

Early history
On January 6, 1932, WCAH-AM was launched as the 4th major AM radio station to launch in Birmingham. It was originally by Birmingham Radio, Inc and carried a full service format. During the station's first two years, it had no major radio network affiliation until 1934 when it became a charter affiliate of the Mutual Broadcasting Company. Following its affiliation with MBS, the station grew a larger local audience to the point that MBS would purchase them outright in 1938. On July 4, 1948, WCAH would launch an FM simulcast known as WCAH-FM (now WKRP-FM). In 1951, The General Tire & Rubber Company would purchase WCAH from MBS, joining with other former MBS O&Os KHJ in Los Angeles, KFRC in San Francisco, and WNAC in Boston. General Tire's broadcasting assets would eventually form the basis of RKO General.

Boss Radio and Talk
In 1961, alongside other RKO AM stations, it would become an affiliate of the Boss Radio network, branding itself as "1150 Boss WCAH" and having a Top 40 format. The format proved to be successful as with other Boss Radio affiliates. The station's ratings were mostly high until the late 1970s, as more and more radio listeners switched to FM, RKO decided to disaffiliate any station who had Boss Radio. Due to this, the station would implement a brand new talk radio format, something that was a novelty at the time. On December 19, 1979, Boss Radio was officially dropped from the WCAH schedule and replaced a new talk radio format named "C115". The talk format was moderate success, but it didn't gain enough attention from local listeners.

News radio
On December 21, 1983, the station would switch its format once again to its current all news format. The station would now provide live news unlike any other news station in Birmingham would at the time, and it promoted itself as being ad-free and a 24 news station. As part of RKO General's backruptancy across 1987 to 1990, the company would sell its Birmingham stations which included WCAH and WKRP-FM to Westwood One (which owned the remains of the NBC Radio) in 1989. Westwood One's ownership of these stations didn't last long however and WCAH and WKRP-FM were then sold to Evergreen Media in 1992. Evergreen Media would then merge with Chancellor in 1995, with Chancellor then merging with Capstar to form AMFM in 1999, and then merging into Clear Channel in 2000.

However due to ownership limits, Clear Channel would sell WCAH, WKRP-FM, WPRT, and WZII to Infinity Radio the exact same year. Infinity Radio would then rename to CBS Radio in 2005. On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on the 17th.