WWVA (AM)

WWVA (1170 kHz, NewsRadio 1170) is an AM radio station in Wheeling, West Virginia, owned by iHeartMedia. And uses the moniker "The Big One".

It is West Virginia's only class A, 50,000–watt clear-channel station, sharing the frequency's Class A status with KOTV in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and KJNP in North Pole, Alaska. Its transmitter site is located at a three-tower facility in St. Clairsville, Ohio.

During the day, a single, nondirectional tower beams its full power to northern West Virginia, southwestern Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh), and eastern Ohio (as far as Akron). At night, power is fed to all three towers in a directional pattern to protect KOTV. Even with this restriction, it can still be heard in most of the eastern two-thirds of the United States, as well as most of Canada, with a good radio.

WWVA is one of the Local Primary 1 Emergency Alert System stations in the Wheeling area.

The BloomDaddy Experience hosts the AM-Drive portion of WWVA. The Glenn Beck Program, The Sean Hannity Show, and The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show air in late mornings, middays, afternoons, and early evenings, respectively. WWVA airs paid religious programming in the late evenings and Coast to Coast AM in the overnight. This Morning, America's First News with Gordon Deal is also carried in the early morning.

WWVA produces Extension Calling, a local agricultural education program recorded by the Ohio State University and West Virginia University extension agents, aired Sunday mornings for over 40 years.^{[citation needed]}

WWVA began broadcasting at 2 a.m. on December 13, 1926, when John Stroebel threw the switch that sent power to a home-built 50-watt transmitter in the basement of his home. One week earlier, the Commerce Department granted a broadcast license on 860 kHz to the radio station WWVA. In its first year of operation, it broadcast to listeners with home-made crystal sets, principally from Stroebel's own home. The call letters are derived from the words Wheeling, West Virginia (WWVA), as U.S. postal codes were once written out with three letters such as WVA for West Virginia, hence Wheeling, WVA became "WWVA".

Through the years, WWVA has been granted several power increases. In May 1941, the FCC moved WWVA to 1170, and in August of that same year, granted it the highest power for AM stations: 50,000 watts. With the increase, WWVA became the most powerful AM station in West Virginia.