WAAX

In its early days the station operated from studios located in the original Pioneer Life Insurance building in downtown Gadsden.

Smithgall hired Calvin Williamson to install a three tower directional array on what was a cow pasture on Rainbow Drive, just north of the Gadsden Country Clubs' golf course.

McDougald continued the light pop sound during the day, but hired a young Mike Morelock to become the night time top 40 jock on "BIG WAAX".

From the late 1950s through early 1963, Robert Allen Chumley Sr. was the news reporter, air-time salesman, and later on, night-time classical music host for WAAX.

But the main ongoing agenda was the Civil Rights Movement where he covered church civil-rights meetings, KKK rallies, and protests, and interviewed such notables as Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, and others for the station.

Such was the atmosphere that Bob, as people called him, operated within as he was sent by the station to Montgomery to cover such events as the gubernatorial polls with a focus on George C. Wallace (who in 1958 ran on an education platform against segregationist John Malcolm Patterson and had the endorsement of the NAACP in that race)[7] Due to such assignments in Gadsden and abroad, WAAX gained recognition with national news organizations through Bob’s coverage of such national issues as well as his association with Clancy Lake of WAPI in Birmingham as well as with those of WSFA television in Montgomery.

In 1998, Program Director Bill Seckbach and GM Kathy Boggs brought the sounds of Rush Limbaugh, Paul Finebaum, and J. Holland to the "Big WAAX".