WVOC
| |
|---|---|
| WCOS, WCOS-FM, WLTY, WNOK, WXBT | |
| History | |
First air date | July 10, 1930 (as WIS) |
Former call signs | WIS (1930–1986) WVOC (1986–2011) WXBT (2011–2014) |
Call sign meaning | "Voice Of Columbia" |
| Technical information | |
| Facility ID | 11902 |
| Class | B |
| Power | 5,000 watts |
Transmitter coordinates | 34°2′0″N 81°8′32″W / 34.03333°N 81.14222°W |
| Translator(s) | 103.5 W278CY (Columbia) |
| Links | |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | wvoc |
WVOC (560
WVOC's power is 5,000 watts around the clock. By day it uses a non-directional signal from a single tower. At night, three towers are used in a directional pattern to protect other stations on 560 AM. This concentrates WVOC's signal in the central part of the state.
History
The station signed on as WIS on July 10, 1930. Soon after signing on, WIS was bought by Liberty Life Insurance Company of Columbia, becoming one of many early radio stations owned by insurance companies in the South.
On October 10, 1931, WIS changed its network affiliation from
On November 14, 1949, a two-story studio on Bull Street was completed to house both the radio station and a planned television station. Construction of WIS-TV was authorized January 29, 1953, and the station signed on the air on November 7, 1953.[7] The two stations operated under a newly formed Liberty Insurance subsidiary, the Broadcasting Company of the South. After acquiring several other stations across the country, it changed its name to Cosmos Broadcasting Corporation, with WIS-AM-TV as the flagship stations.
Cosmos pulled out of radio in 1986, and the new owners adopted the call sign WVOC on December 31. The TV station kept the WIS-TV call letters. The radio station had to change its call sign due to a since-repealed FCC rule that barred stations with different ownership from sharing the same call sign. (WVOC had been the call letters of the student radio station at
WVOC began a talk radio format with mostly syndicated shows, including Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Matt Drudge, Kim Komando and Coast to Coast AM. The station also featured a statewide-syndicated sports talk show in evenings.
In 2001,
From 1954 until 2002, WIS/WVOC was the flagship for the University of South Carolina college football and basketball, and touted itself as the "Home of the Gamecocks." However, on June 27, 2002, Host Communications, which handled game broadcasts for the university, decided to leave WVOC in favor of rival Citadel Broadcasting stations. The decision put Gamecock athletics on Citadel's FM signals, which had wider coverage than WVOC.
WVOC was the flagship radio station of the May 15, 2007, broadcast of the Fox News Republican Presidential Debate which took place in Columbia.
On October 26, 2011, WVOC began simulcasting on its sister station
In 2013, WXBT became an affiliate of Fox Sports Radio after it originally carried ESPN Radio programming.
WXBT fired most of its local hosts in October 2014 owing to poor ratings.[9] That November 6, WXBT switched to a simulcast of WVOC-FM, while its former sports programming moved back to WCOS.[10]
The simulcast ended on December 10, when the talk programming moved exclusively to AM 560, which changed its call letters back to WVOC on December 15. WXBT also returned to its previous
Programming
WVOC personalities Gary David and Christopher Thompson host the morning drive program;
Weekends hosts include
.References
- ^ "News Bites: 'Jingle Ball Pre-Show Village,' 'Cruz Cares,' Jed The Fish, Dr. Drew Pinsky". Insideradio.com. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
- WIS-TV. Retrieved 2008-04-22.
- ^ "WIS - Columbia/Florence, South Carolina". Raycom Media. Retrieved 2008-04-22.
- ^ White, Thomas H. (2012-01-01). "Mystique of the Three-Letter Callsigns". Retrieved 2012-01-10.
- ^ "WWNC, WIS Join NBC" (PDF). Broadcasting. October 15, 1931. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
- ^ "(photo caption)" (PDF). Broadcasting. January 1, 1941. p. 16. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
- ^ Telecasting Yearbook 1955-1956 page 236
- ^ "OAI Record Viewer". Archived from the original on 2017-09-15. Retrieved 2023-09-11.
- ^ "Gillespie: Bottom line drives changes at stations such as 560 the Team | Sports | the State". Archived from the original on 2014-12-08. Retrieved 2014-12-07.
- ^ "WVOC Columbia Returns To 560; Sports Moves Back To 1400". RadioInsight. 2014-11-06. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
External links
- Radio and Television Towers and Studios in Columbia, SC
- WVOC in the FCC AM station database
- WVOC in Nielsen Audio's AM station database
- W278CY in the FCC FM station database
- W278CY at FCCdata.org