WPYA (97.3 FM) is an American radio station licensed to Gardendale, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, United States.
It shares studios with six other sister stations in the Cahaba neighborhood in far southeast Birmingham, and the transmitter is based atop Red Mountain.
[3] Birmingham had not had a CHR station since WAPI-FM (now WJOX-FM) changed formats in 1994, and the owners were hoping to fill that niche.
However, WQEN, a CHR station licensed to Gadsden, began broadcasting from a tower closer to Birmingham earlier in the year and was more successful than WEDA.
In October 2001, sister station WODL (Oldies 106.9) unexpectedly changed its format to all 1980s music and became known as WBPT, "106-9 the Point".
On August 30, 2011, at 2 p.m., after playing "Dirt Road Anthem" by Jason Aldean and the first few seconds of "You Lie" by The Band Perry, WNCB changed their format to sports, branded as "97.3 The Zone".
On July 20, 2012, Cox Radio, Inc. announced the sale of WZNN and 22 other stations to Summit Media LLC for $66.25 million.
[7][8] On February 11, 2013, the station pulled the plug on its specialty programming, including "Eyes on Auburn", "Tider Insider", and "The Midnight Meltdown", for unknown reasons.
"[9] On May 6, 2013, the station cancelled the popular late morning Straight Talk show featuring Matt Coulter and former Alabama head basketball coach Wimp Sanderson.
[10] Other shows at the time included the "Smashmouth Radio Network" with Kevin Scarbinsky and Scott Griffin in morning drive, "The Sports Czars" with Speedy, Greg and Helmsey at midday, The Sports Zone with Matt Coulter and Kip Keefer in afternoon drive, and the Eli and Stan Show with Eli Gold and Stan White.
[12][13] However, "Y'all" was considered to be another form of stunting, as the station aired little to no on-air imaging, as well as a very short playlist that was repeated every couple of hours.
WEZZ became the third station in the United States to flip to Christmas music during the 2014 holiday season, following WMJJ and WEZW in New Jersey.
On April 1, 2021, WPYA picked up the rights to air The Ace & TJ Show in Birmingham after 19 years on longtime affiliate WQEN.