WLW Radio Station
In this article, Garrison Gove will inform readers about WLW, which at one point boasted the title of the world's most powerful radio station.
WLW: most powerful radio station in the world
By Garrison Gove
Cincinnati, Ohio. The Queen City. Home to the Bengals and spaghetti covered in chili. Famous for having Jerry Springer as a mayor, and the killing of Harambe. However, unbeknownst to most people, Cincinnati is also home to a radio station that, at one point, covered half of the globe.
In 1921, Cincinnati businessman Powel Crosely Jr. attempted to buy a radio for his son, only to discover that a radio set cost $135. Purchasing instructions, Crosely assembled his own radio set, and founded the Crosely Radio Corporation, which would become the largest radio manufacturer in the world according to Ohio History Central. Crosely was also disappointed by the lack of quality programs available, and after purchasing a 20-watt transmitter, began making amatuer broadcasts from the living room of his mansion.
In 1922, the U.S. Department of Commerce granted Crosely an official license to operate his own commercial radio station. With the randomly chosen call letters “WLW," the station began broadcasting from Crosely’s radio manufacturing plant at 50 watts. In 1923, the station was granted permission to broadcast at 500 watts. In 1927, WLW was assigned to the 700 kHz clear channel, a frequency protected from interference from other stations to maximize its broadcast range. The following year, the FCC granted WLW permission to broadcast at 50 kilowatts, the fourth station in the country to do so and the first to broadcast at a regular schedule. It was around this time that WLW dubbed itself “The Nation’s Station” , according to The History of American Broadcasting.
In 1932, the FCC gave Crosely a license to broadcast at 500 kilowatts, and, in 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt officially granted WLW’s 500-kilowatt signal by pushing the same golden telegraph key that Woodrow Wilson used to open the Panama Canal according to Not Just A Sound: The Story of WLW by Dick Perry. To accommodate this new broadcasting strength, Crosely hired three electronics companies to build a $500,000 transmitter that occupied several buildings and required its own cooling pond. According to urban legend, the station’s broadcast was so strong that residents near the transmitter could hear broadcasts through barbed wire fences, rain gutters, bedsprings, water faucets, and radiators. A gas station near the transmitter found it impossible to turn off its lights. It was during this era that WLW launched the careers of many radio stars, including Ma Perkins, Andy Williams, Rosemary and Betty Clooney, Red Skelton, and Fats Waller.
Following this record-breaking development, 15 competing stations applied to broadcast at the same strength. All were declined, prompting them to take legal action against both WLW and the FCC. It was at this time that many radio stations began complaining that WLW was interfering with their signals, most notably CFRB in Toronto, Canada. According to the National Endowment for the Humanities, New Jersey radio station WOR sued WLW for allegedly interfering with its broadcasts. After five years of legal debate, the FCC forced WLW to return to its 50-kilowatt broadcast, which remains the maximum legal strength for radio stations to this day. During World War II, WLW was briefly allowed to resume high-power broadcasting to transmit the radio network Voice of America as far away as Europe and South America accoridng to The Columbus Dispatch.
Following the war, Crosley sold the station and began auto manufacturing. Crosley’s auto plant shut down in 1952, and he died of a heart attack in 1961 at the age of seventy-four. WLW is currently owned by iHeartMedia, and still broadcasts at 50 kilowatts on the 700 AM dial. Despite the reduction in power, the station can still be heard as far away as Toledo, Ohio, and Lexington, Kentucky and, at night, can be heard across much of North America with a good radio. The station is the flagship station for the Cincinnati Reds, and is a primary entry point for the Emergency Alert System in southwestern Ohio, Kentucky, and eastern Indiana. While radio as a medium has largely been overshadowed by television and online music streaming, the engineering marvel of WLW can not be ignored.
