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WTVN is a full-service AM radio station in Columbus, Ohio located at 610 kHz. It has news, talk, and sports programs, is the dominant AM station in the Columbus market and is consistently rated either #1 or #2 (to WNCI's #1) by Arbitron. WTVN is currently owned by Clear Channel Communications.

Although WTVN only uses 5kW of power during the day, the station can be heard as far away as Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Detroit, and Cleveland. At night, the signal is directionalized to protect co-channel stations in Kansas City, Philadelphia, Miami, etc. The extra power is radiated over central Columbus—however outlying suburbs in the direction of the nulls will experience a degraded signal.

There were plans to improve WTVN's signal by adding a new antenna array and increasing power to 50 kW, but these plans fell through when zoning problems could not be resolved. Ultimately, WTVN tried to claim the right to build new towers as a "public utility" but lost in court on May 12, 2002.^[1]

At one time, when WTVN still aired music programming, the station broadcast using C-QUAM AM Stereo. The stereo equipment was installed in 1988 but it was not until 1992 that the station operated in full stereo. Analog stereo transmissions ended many years ago. WTVN began broadcasting in HD-Radio in June 2005.

The former WTVN-TV now operates as WSYX. The former WTVN-FM now operates as WLVQ. Neither is owned by Clear Channel.

History [link]

WTVN originally started as WBAV, operating as a daytime station at 640 kHz^{[citation needed]} on April 29, 1922. The call letters were later changed to WAIU, which stood for American Insurance Union.

WAIU was a charter member of the CBS Radio Network, being one of the 16 stations that aired the first CBS network program on September 18, 1927.^[2] The call letters were again changed in the late 1930s, this time to WHKC (to go with those of then commonly owned station WHK in Cleveland).

In the middle-1940's, WHKC (still at 640 kHz) obtained the frequency of WCLE, 610 kHz in Cleveland, Ohio, which operated daytime only, forming 610 WHKC. A directional antenna system was installed near Columbus. This allowed WHKC to go to full-time operation. The 640 frequency was then assigned to new arrival WHKK in Akron, Ohio (which corresponded with Akron station WJW moving to Cleveland). Operation on 640 Kc was limited to San Francisco sunset because of the superior propagation at low AM frequencies.

The station adopted its current WTVN call letters in 1954 when it was acquired by Radio Cincinnati Inc., a firm that would later become Taft Broadcasting.^[3] The sale to the Taft family made 610 AM a sister station to WTVN-TV (channel 6); in 1960 Taft launched an FM station in Columbus, WTVN-FM (96.3, now WLVQ).

In 1987 Taft was reorganized as Great American Broadcasting after financier Carl Lindner, Jr. succeeded in a hostile takeover of the company. Great American retained WTVN and WLVQ but not WTVN-TV, which was sold to former Taft shareholder Robert Bass and his new company, Anchor Media. Great American Broadcasting was renamed Citicasters in 1993. Jacor Communications purchased Citicasters in 1996. WLVQ was split from WTVN when the FM station was acquired by CBS Radio in 1998, and a year later Jacor was absorbed into Clear Channel Communications.

Building [link]

American Insurance Union owned the AIU Building (now the LeVeque Tower) in Columbus, which at the time was the tallest building in the city. Various radio facilities were located at the top of the skyscraper. American Insurance Union later became part of Nationwide Insurance, owner of Nationwide Communications - former parent company of WNCI, which is a current sister station to WTVN.

Programming [link]

WTVN features highly successful stars of talk radio in the U.S., with conservative syndicated talk hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. The local talk radio hosts are Bob Conners in the early morning and John Corby in the afternoon. The format of the local shows usually consists of simple day-to-day "topics" in which listeners are encouraged to call to discuss their viewpoints or experiences.

The station also airs other syndicated programming, including Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Mike McConnell, The Mutual Fund Show with Adam Bold, and Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.

Personnel [link]

The station also replaced Pat Pagano and the meteorologists at Metro Weather Service with weather talent from WBNS (Channel 10).^[4],[5] Metro Weather, based out of Valley Stream, New York, provided weather reports 24 hours, including Pagano during Bob Conners' morning show. Despite his remote location, Pagano interacted with Connors frequently, often sharing experiences from family dinners and opinions on various "reality" TV shows. Pagano and Metro Weather now provide on-air weather forecasts in Columbus for WODB 107.9 FM.^[6]

References [link]

External links [link]

• Official website
• Query the FCC's AM station database for WTVN
• Radio-Locator Information on WTVN
• Query Arbitron's AM station database for WTVN