West Alabama radio has a new feature thanks to a format change by FM radio station WSLY 104.9 of York and Meridian, Miss.

“We hope to fill a void on our radio dials,” station sales manager Sean Parker said. A product of Grantel Broadcasting, 104.9 is now a station dedicated solely to sports talk.

“There was just a hole in our area in East Mississippi and West Alabama for sports talk,” Parker said. “Sports talk is one of the hottest formats in the country for radio. We were just sort of teased in our area for a while when we could pick up JOX on 100.5.”

According to Parker, that “teasing” proved enough to garner a demand for the sports talk vacuum to be filled.

“We saw a need for sports talk,” Parker explained. “We want to be very community-oriented and carry a plethora of local sports within The Twin State area.”

The Twin States Sports Station for York, Meridian and Demopolis currently carries a weekday schedule that consists primarily of Fox Sports programming. WSLY broadcasts Steve Saban from 6-8 a.m. before airing Dan Patrick from 8-11 a.m. Jim Rome airs from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. WSLY then broadcasts Paul Finebaum from 2-6 p.m. Additionally, the station is set to carry NASCAR action on the weekends and is currently at work to design programming aimed at local sporting interests.

“We’ve had a huge response from West Alabama and East Mississippi,” Parker said. “I had a couple calls from Meridian that said that Finebaum was a little too Alabama and Auburn. So we’re looking for some more programming to give attention to the universities in MIssissippi and Alabama.

The station is scheduled to air all of Demopolis’ baseball playoff action beginning with Friday night’s first-round games against Tallassee. Those games are set for 4 and 6:30 p.m. Game three would air Saturday at 1 p.m. if needed.