page_title: WERC-FM
section_title: Switching to rock and talk
hierarchical_section_title: WERC-FM / History / Switching to rock and talk
caption_attribution_description: English: Live now with JT on @1055WERC! Tune in, #AL06!
context_page_description: WERC-FM — branded News Radio 105.5 WERC — is a news/talk radio station licensed to Hoover, Alabama and serving the Birmingham market. It operates at an effective radiated power of 29.5 kilowatts. It is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc.. The station has studios at Beacon Ridge Tower in Birmingham and its transmitter is atop Red Mountain.
  From 1997 until 2008, the 105.5 FM frequency was home to the WENN call letters, which for many years were synonymous to many listeners from Birmingham and most of Central and North Alabama as a legendary urban station with a wide reaching signal. The station's current format originated in 1982 at 960 AM, and is the oldest news/talk format in Birmingham; as a result, WERC-FM is an indirect descendant of Birmingham's first radio station, WBRC. After the talk format and WERC calls migrated to the 105.5 facility, the 960 facility adopted the WVVB call letters and "Vulcan" branding – which were both originally used at the 105.5 frequency between the discontinuation of WENN and the conversion to WERC-FM.
context_section_description: On December 2, 2006, WENN surprised Birmingham area radio listeners by dropping gospel music for modern rock.  This came less than one week after WRAX, by then at 100.5 FM, dropped modern rock to become the market's first FM sports radio station.  The WENN call letters were retired on September 18, 2008 in favor of WVVB.  WVVB's branding, "105.5 The Vulcan", was a tribute to a well-known landmark in Birmingham: The Vulcan Statue.
  WVVB changed formats on July 6, 2009, dropping the rock music format to become a simulcast of the news-talk format of WERC, then at 960 AM.  This is the second incarnation of WERC-FM in Birmingham; from 1972 until 1977, the WERC-FM call letters were assigned to 106.9 FM.  The simulcast with 960 AM ended in January 2011, when that frequency changed formats and became an active rock station, reviving the "Vulcan" branding and, on February 15, the WVVB call letters; the talk format aired solely on WERC-FM. On June 23, 2011, WERC-FM resumed simulcasting on 960 AM. The AM station resumed the WERC call sign on July 14, 2011.
caption: Politician Gary Palmer in-studio at WERC-FM in 2020.
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