WOC (AM)

WOC
City of license Davenport, Iowa
Broadcast area Quad Cities
Branding WOC Talkradio 1420 AM
Slogan The Quad Cities News Leader
Frequency 1420 AM (kHz)
First air date February 18, 1922 (experimental under various calls from 1907-1922)
Format Commercial; News/Talk
Power 5,000 watts
Class B
Facility ID 60360
Transmitter coordinates 41°33′0″N 90°28′37″W / 41.55000°N 90.47694°W
Callsign meaning Randomly assigned, but station later adopted the slogan World (also Wonders) Of Chiropractic
Owner iHeartMedia, Inc.
Sister stations KCQQ, KMXG, KUUL, WFXN, WLLR-FM, KWQC-TV
Webcast Listen Live!
Website http://www.woc1420.com/

WOC is a news and talk radio station, licensed to Davenport, Iowa, and operating with a power of 5 kilowatts on 1420 kilohertz. Owned by iHeartMedia, Inc., with studios at 3535 East Kimberly Road in Davenport (along with KMXG, KUUL-FM, WLLR-FM, KCQQ-FM and WFXN), its transmitter is located at an antenna farm in Bettendorf, Iowa, near the Scott Community College Campus. (WOC is the only remaining AM station at this site, as all the other transmitters are for FM radio or television.)

WOC's most famous employee was future U.S. President Ronald "Dutch" Reagan, who got his start in radio there in 1932, broadcasting football games.

Pre-history

WOC's pre-history was complex, with roots extending back to the earliest days of radio.

Robert K. Karlowa had an longtime interest in radiotelegraphy, starting in 1907,[1] and by early 1913 was "the chief operator of the Tri-Cities Wireless club",[2] which met on the sixth floor of the Best Building in Rock Island, Illinois. In mid-1915, he and Ray E. Hall, representing the Tri-City Radio Laboratory, were issued an Experimental license for station 9XR,[3] which also operated from the Best Building. This station used a spark transmitter and could only transmit Morse code, so it was never used for entertainment broadcasts. Moreover, effective April 6, 1917, with the entrance of the United States into World War One, all civilian stations were ordered to shut down for the duration of the war, and 9XR permanently disappeared.

The civilian ban on radio stations was lifted in October, 1919, and the introduction of vacuum-tube radio transmitters now made audio broadcasts possible. Karlowa's subsequent activities were divided between two separate stations. Karlowa himself was issued a standard amateur license, with callsign 9BC, for his home in Davenport, Iowa. On December 3, 1919[4] he began broadcasting a series[5] of concerts.

A second standard amateur license, 9BY, was issued in the name of the Young & McCombs department store, located in the Best Building in Rock Island,[6] where Karlowa was the head of the radio department. 9BY would feature an even more extensive selection of programs. It was announced that, starting about September 1, 1920, the station would broadcast regular concerts on Thursday evenings.[7] A few weeks later, on election day, November 2, 9BY broadcast election results,[8] and later that month it was reported that its weekly broadcasts featured promotional phonograph records provided by the Pathé Frères Phonograph Company.[9]

In early 1921, Karlowa formed the Karlowa Radio Corporation, which bought the Young & Combs radio department assets,[10] and took over operation of 9BY, still located in the Best Building in Rock Island. The station maintained its Thursday evening concert schedule.[11]

WOC history

WOC's history is also complex. Effective December 1, 1921, the U.S. government adopted a regulation requiring that stations making broadcasts intended for the public now had to hold a Limited Commercial license. On February 18, 1922 the Karlowa Radio Corporation was issued a new license, for a broadcasting station with the randomly assigned call letters of WOC, still located in the Rock Island Best Building. Karlowa continued to operate the station for a short time, but the costs had become too great. In March he sold WOC to Col. B. J. Palmer, and on May 9, 1922 a new license was issued for the Palmer School of Chiropractic (later the Palmer College of Chiropractic) in Davenport, Iowa—the start of a family connection that lasted almost 75 years.

The station equipment was moved to a small studio on Palmer's Brady Street campus. WOC initially broadcast on the common Entertainment wavelength of 360 meters (833 kilohertz), and on October 14 was authorized to also broadcast weather reports on 485 meters (619 kilohertz). In October it was upgraded to a state-of-the-art 500 watt Western Electric transmitter,[12] which allowed WOC to move to the more exclusive "Class B" wavelength of 400 meters (750 kilohertz). In May, 1923, 620 kilohertz was reserved as a Class B frequency assignment for qualified stations in "Davenport/Des Moines, Iowa", and WOC was authorized to move to this new frequency.

In 1924, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company was in the process of forming a radio network, centered on WEAF in New York City. While in the planning stages, WOC was identified as one of 21 stations thought to be "especially desirable because of coverage and reliable technical performance".[13] On July 4, 1925 the station participated in the network's "National Defense Test Day" program.[14] In September 1927, WOC became a charter member of the new NBC radio network.

The Federal Radio Commission's General Order 40 reallocated frequencies in 1928, and WOC was reassigned to share time on 1000 kilohertz with the Banker's Life station in Des Moines, Iowa, WHO. In late 1929, the Central Broadcasting Company was formed with B.J. Palmer as chairman. This company purchased both WOC and WHO, which were then synchronized to simultaneously broadcast identical programs on the same frequency, each using a 5 kilowatt transmitter. In April, 1932, a 50 kilowatt transmitter, near Mitchellville and close to Des Moines, went into service, and the separate transmitters were silenced, with the two stations now combined with the under a dual identity as WHO-WOC.[15]

In 1933, Ronald Reagan got his first broadcasting job at WOC as a sportscaster.[16] He returned to WOC in 1988, when WOC and FM-affiliate KIIK 104 dedicated their new studios on East Kimberly Road.

WOC was restored as a separate station from WHO in November 1934, when the Palmer School purchased station KICK in Carter Lake, Iowa,[17] which was moved to Davenport, and its callsign changed to WOC. In early 1935 the station was assigned to a "local" frequency of 1370 kilohertz, and by 1937 it was operating with 250 watts daytime and 100 watts at night. In 1941, WOC briefly moved to a second local frequency, 1450 kilohertz, and the next year was upgraded to a "regional" frequency, 1420 kilohertz, its current dial position, with a power boost to 5 kilowatts.

WOC's FM affiliate, WOC-FM, signed on the air in October 1948 at 103.7 MHz. The FM station has changed formats three times, currently has a country music format as WLLR-FM, and is the highest-rated station in the Quad Cities market. WOC-TV, the first television station in Iowa, began broadcasting on October 31, 1949; it became KWQC-TV after the Palmer family split its radio and television holdings in 1986. The AM frequency, meanwhile, has undergone several format changes since the end of the Golden Age of Radio. Its current news/talk radio format started in 1979.

In 1986 WOC and its FM affiliate were purchased from Palmer Communications, Inc. by Vickie Anne Palmer and her then husband, J. Douglas Miller. In 1989 Mr. Miller entered the motion picture business as a producer and Ms. Palmer took over complete control of the properties, then known as Signal Hill Communications, Inc., until it was sold in 1996. The station was purchased by Clear Channel Communications in 2000.

WOC is the oldest surviving broadcasting station in the middle Mississippi Valley. Other reported firsts include:[18]

Local programming

WOC currently boasts a five-person news staff, and shares its services with its sister stations.

Local personalities who host talk shows include Dan Kennedy who host "The Morning Report"; Jim Fisher, who fronts an afternoon call-in show; and a number of advice-type programs. The station also carries University of Iowa sports and National Football League games.

Syndicated talk shows include those hosted by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

In December 2007 Jim Albrecht, the host of the morning show, was fired from WOC, leaving Sean Patrick and Dan Kennedy to host the morning show. Mr. Albrecht is now hosting a television commentary segment called "The Quad Cities' According to Jim" three nights a week during the 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts on local television station WQAD.

Starting in February 2012, Mark Manuel and Steve Ketalaar began hosting WOC's morning show. The move came with the demise of the oldies format at KUUL-FM, where the two had hosted the morning program for five years.

Sources

  1. ↑ Education's Own Stations (Palmer School of Chiropractic section) by S. E. Frost, Jr., 1937, page 315.
  2. ↑ "Karlowa Gives Scientific Talk", Rock Island Argus, February 10, 1913, page 12.
  3. ↑ "Special Land Stations", Radio Service Bulletin, May, 1915, page 4. (The "9" in 9XR's callsign identified the station as being located in the ninth Radio Inspection district, while the "X" indicated that it was operating under an experimental license.)
  4. ↑ "1919—The Year the Big Drought Struck Davenport", Davenport Democrat and Leader, July 17, 1924, Page 45.
  5. ↑ "Concerts by Wireless Telephone Fad in Iowa", Washington Herald, March 2, 1920, page 3.
  6. ↑ Radio Manufacturers of the 1920's: Volume 3—RCA to Zenith (Tri-City section) by Alan Douglas, 1991, page 187.
  7. ↑ QST, September, 1920, page 44.
  8. ↑ "Radio Amateurs to Get Returns", Decatur Review, November 1, 1920, page 14.
  9. ↑ "Pathe Special Offer Popular", The Talking Machine Trade, November 20, 1920, page 60.
  10. ↑ Douglas, page 187.
  11. ↑ "9BY, Rock Island, Ills.", QST, March, 1921, page 42.
  12. ↑ "Western Electric Broadcasting Stations in the U. S.", Radio Broadcast, January, 1923, page 256.
  13. ↑ Commercial Broadcasting Pioneer: The WEAF Experiment 1922-1926 by William Peck Banning, 1946, page 231.
  14. ↑ Ibid., page 276.
  15. ↑ Frost, page 316.
  16. ↑ "Davenport History 2". Quad City Memory. Retrieved 2007-12-18.
  17. ↑ KICK originated as KFLZ, first licensed to the Atlantic Automobile Company in Atlantic, Iowa on December 1, 1923.
  18. ↑ Davenport's WOC AM-FM-TV by David T. Cooper, 2010, page 8.

External links