WTMP
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| WTMP | |
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| City of license | Dade City, Florida (FM) Egypt Lake, Florida (AM) |
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| Broadcast area | Tampa Bay Area |
| Branding | "96.1 FM and 1150 AM WTMP" |
| Slogan | Today's Best in R&B and Classic Soul |
| Frequency | 96.1 (MHz) 1150 (kHz) |
| First air date | 1954 |
| Format | Urban Adult Contemporary |
| ERP | 2,800 watts (FM) 10,000 watts daytime, 500 watts nighttime (AM) |
| Class | FM: A AM: B |
| Callsign meaning | TaMPa |
| Owner | Tama Broadcasting, Inc. |
| Website | www.wtmp.com |
WTMP is an Urban Adult Contemporary radio station that serves the Tampa Bay area that plays R&B and classic soul music that aims towards the African American community, though its main Urban competitors are WBTP and WRXB. Its target audience is African Americans between the ages of 25-54. It is the current home of the Tom Joyner Morning Show and The Wendy Williams Experience. Michael Baisden's syndicated show Love, Lust and Lies is also picked up by the station. The station's current slogan is "Today's Best In R&B and Classic Soul". It is owned by Tama Broadcasting, Inc.
WTMP, on 1150 AM originally, has been a longtime heritage Urban Contemporary station in the market. Noted R&B vocalist and Tampa native King Coleman got his start as a DJ on WTMP in the 1950s. In the late 1990s, the station, then-owned by Broadcast Capital, was bought by its current owner, Tama Broadcasting, which has headquarters in Tampa, thus making WTMP the flagship. Long controlled by the Cherry family, Tama also owns stations in Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, Savannah, Georgia and Greenville, South Carolina; it owns newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Pierce. The owner went on to buy the then-WGUL-FM in 2002 and made it a Hip Hop/Urban station (and home to Russ Parr in the Morning) as WTMP-FM. Even after a format change to Jammin Oldies, that station did not do well do to its rimshot signal, so it ended up a simulcast of WTMP-AM a year later. The rimshot signal, which barely reaches the Hillsborough County line from its transmitter southeast of Brooksville, also couldn't be moved closer to Tampa or upgraded with changes to the tower or wattage, due to interference issues with other stations broadcasting on 96.1 and nearby frequencies.
The Tampa Bay would see an Urban-formatted Hip Hop station months later called WBTP; WLLD is a Rhythmic-formatted Hip Hop station and has been around years prior. Such competition was a minor setback for WTMP as it was losing younger listeners to WBTP, but it was already restructured to an Urban Adult Contemporary by then anyway.
Outside its usual R&B and Classic Soul playlist tenure, it also plays Gospel (early weekday mornings and Sundays), Old School Mix shows Friday nights and Blues Sunday nights. In addition, it also has talk shows on weekends aimed at the community.
WTMP's AM signal covers the market very well -- as opposed to its FM signal which is a rimshot.
[edit] External links
- Official WTMP Website
- Tama Broadcasting
- Query the FCC's FM station database for WTMP
- Radio Locator information on WTMP
- Query the FCC's AM station database for WTMP
- Radio Locator Information on WTMP
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