WRVA (AM)

WRVA (1140 kHz) is a News/Talk/Sports formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Richmond, Virginia, serving Central Virginia. WRVA is owned and operated by Entercom Communications.[1]

WRVA
CityRichmond, Virginia
Broadcast areaCentral Virginia
Frequency1140 kHz
BrandingNewsRadio 1140 WRVA
SloganRichmond's News, Weather & Traffic
Programming
FormatNews/Talk/Sports
AffiliationsCBS News Radio
Premiere Networks
The Blaze
Westwood One
Ownership
OwnerEntercom Communications
(Entercom License, LLC)
Sister stationsW253BI, WBTJ, WRNL, WRVQ, WRXL, WTVR-FM
History
First air dateNovember 2, 1925 (1925-11-02)
Call sign meaningRichmond, VirginiA
Technical information
Facility ID11914
ClassA
Power50,000 watts (unlimited)
Transmitter coordinates37°24′13.0″N 77°18′59.0″W
Translator(s)96.1 W241AP (Midlothian)
Repeater(s)98.1 WTVR-HD2 (Richmond)
Links
WebcastListen live (via Radio.com)
Websitenewsradiowrva.radio.com

Established in 1925, WRVA is one of Virginia's oldest Broadcasting operations and its most powerful AM radio station. WRVA is authorized to broadcast with 50,000 watts as a Clear-channel station from its base of operations near the Virginia State Capitol. For much of its history, WRVA billed itself as the "Voice of Virginia."

History

Although three-letter call letters were still available when the station was started, "WRVA" was chosen since (W) R VA was short for Richmond, VA. WRVA was launched at 9:00 p.m. on November 2, 1925. Known initially as "Edgeworth Radio", it was owned by Larus and Brother Company, a tobacco company operating as the "House of Edgeworth." The radio station was originally put on the air as a public service 2 nights per week.

Facilities: studios, transmitters and towers

The early WRVA facilities were a small studio in a corner of a warehouse on Richmond's Tobacco Row using a tower mounted on the roof of the building. It soon became a vital and profitable business enterprise.

By 1930, WRVA was on-the-air 7 days a week, 24 hours daily, with broadcasting power increased to 50,000 watts.

In 1935, WRVA built a new transmitter in Mechanicsville, a small community located northeast of Richmond in Hanover County. The new tower for the antenna at this location was the first all-wood self-supporting radio tower in North America.[2] Field tests conducted later indicated that the new tower produced "a 400% increase in dependable night-time service area and a three-fold increase in the daytime area."[3]

However, it was only a short time before a much larger facility was to be placed on-line. WRVA's 1939-era transmitter building in Varina east of Richmond is listed as a National Historic Site. It is a two-story colonial style brick building which was a kit-building. It originally contained a 1929 Western Electric transmitter, which was a "walk-through" model. The broadcast signal was transmitted from two large steel twin towers.

In the late 1940s, WRVA's facilities extended beyond Richmond. An ad in a 1947 issue of the trade magazine "Broadcasting" proclaimed "Studios in Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia."[4] (Richmond and Norfolk are nearly 100 miles apart.) The same ad noted that WRVA was "Virginia's only 50,000 watt radio station."[4] An FM presence was established in Norfolk June 6, 1948, when WRVC began broadcasting there on 102.5 MHz, "airing shows of CBS, duplicating parts of the WRVA schedule and originating some of its own programs."[5]

WRVA began an FM operation in Richmond in 1948. On August 12, WRVB (today WRVQ) began broadcasting on 94.5 MHz. WRVB duplicated the AM station's programming "with a few exceptions."[6]

In 1961, the "Western" transmitter, as it came to be known by the WRVA staff, was replaced with an RCA BTA-50H Ampliphase after serving for more than 30 years but was kept as a back-up transmitter. It was powered-up and used at least once a week to keep it in operational condition for another 20 years.

In the early 1980s, the Western Electric transmitter was removed and replaced with a 50,000 watt Continental. The Ampliphase was then made the back-up. In the 1990s, the Ampliphase was then replaced by a newer Harris Electric transmitter and the Continental was made as the back-up. During the 1970s, WRVQ installed its transmitters in the building.

The Voice of Virginia: a "clear channel" station

WRVA is well known for its 24-hour broadcasts on the clear channel frequency at 1140 kHz, with a 50,000 watt non-directional signal, intended to reach rural areas. Its daytime signal provides at least secondary coverage to most of the eastern portion of Virginia, from Hampton Roads to Fredericksburg. At night (when the AM signals travel farther), WRVA covers almost all of the eastern half of North America, including most of the Eastern and Central United States and three-fourths of Canada.

Notable characters and staff

From 1946–1957, the station carried The Old Dominion Barn Dance, a popular live country music program.

Two of WRVA's more popular personalities were fictional characters. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the studio was located across Capitol Square from the Virginia State Capitol in the Hotel Richmond, WRVA's Capitol Squirrel imparted wisdom and tossed an occasional snowball at lawmakers and local government using a voice created by speeding up the recording in manner later made famous by David Seville and his "Alvin and the Chipmunks" characters. In the 1970s, the Millard the Mallard character carried on dialogue with announcers during the morning rush hour traffic reports.

One of WRVA's better known real-life personalities was long-time host Alden Aaroe. His Christmas "WRVA Salvation Army Shoe Fund" provided thousands of shoes annually for needy children. Although Aaroe died in 1993, the program he headed has continued, having raised over $5.6 million in its history. Virginia Commonwealth University and Aaroe's family honor the memory of Alden Aaroe with a scholarship in his name for broadcast journalism students.

Because of AM radio signal reach, nighttime hosts enjoyed a listenership at considerable distances such as the former head of the Virginia Chapter of the NAACP, host Jack Gravely, whose evening show was heard hundreds of miles away well into neighboring states overnight. An overnight country music program headed by "Big John" Trimble targeted truckers in the 1970s, again taking advantage of the large nighttime coverage area of the clear channel station. Broadcasting from a remote studio located at Jarrell's Truck Stop in Doswell, Virginia, the show ran for eighteen years. It made Big John into a national radio personality.[7]

1974: traffic helicopter crash

In 1974, the WRVA traffic helicopter lost a tail rotor at a low altitude and crashed into a house on West 31st Street in South Richmond, killing WRVA reporter Howard Bloom, the pilot, and a small child eating dinner with his family.

Basis for Virginia News Network, Metro Traffic

The Virginia News Network (VNN) was founded in 1977 when Charlottesville Broadcasting Corporation began distributing newscasts to a handful of affiliates via telephone line from its flagship station, WINA (AM) in Charlottesville.[8] VNN headquarters were relocated to WRVA's signature headquarters building in Richmond about 6 years later.[9]

In the early 1990s, WRVA turned over its traffic reporting functions to Metro Traffic but in 2002 began doing its own reports again when the Clear Channel Richmond stations formed its "Total Traffic" division with local personality Scott Stevens in charge. Not only does Total Traffic do reports for WRVA, it also files reports for the other stations in the Clear Channel Richmond Group, and just recently started feeding traffic reports to other cities outside Richmond as well. Stevens died of a heart attack in September, 2003.

FM, television, ownership changes

The owners later added WRVA-FM at 94.5 MHz and WRVA-TV, broadcasting on television channel 12 beginning in 1956. After simulcasting with WRVA during the early years of FM radio, in the 1970s, WRVA-FM became WRVQ, and was one of Richmond's first FM stations to switch to a top-40 hit music format.

In 1968, the television station was sold to Jefferson Pilot Broadcasting, owner of WBT, WBT-FM, and WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina, and its call sign was changed to WWBT (Raycom Media has since purchased the television station[10]).

The radio stations went through several owners after Larus and Brother, including Southern Broadcasting, Harte-Hanks, Edens Broadcasting and Force II Communications, LP, before they were purchased in 1992 by Clear Channel Communications, now known as iHeartMedia.

In November 2004, a station using the call sign WRVA-FM began serving the Raleigh-Durham market of North Carolina at 100.7 MHz. It was able to have those call letters without complaint because that station is also owned by iHeartMedia. This station became WRDU in 2013.

On November 1, 2017, iHeartMedia announced that WRVA, along with all of their sister stations in Richmond and Chattanooga, will be sold to Entercom due to that company's merger with CBS Radio.[11] The sale was completed on December 19, 2017.[12]

WRVA at Library of Virginia

WRVA is the subject of a major exhibit at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. Featured are historical documents, sound files, print artifacts, and such local interest items as the shoes of the late announcer Alden Aaroe, who founded an annual program that has raised over $5.6 million to provide shoes for needy children over a 36-year period.

Programming

WRVA currently has two locally produced programs in its weekday lineup, which are heard during morning and afternoon drive time: Richmond's Morning News with John Reid from 5:30 to 9 a.m. and Jeff Katz from 3 to 6 p.m. The remainder of the weekday schedule consists of syndicated talk programs from the Premiere Networks wing of iHeartMedia: The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Sean Hannity Show, Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis, and Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. Late mornings also feature the Glenn Beck Program from TheBlaze Network and late evenings feature Mark Levin from the Westwood One Network.

Jeff Katz, a former host at WRKO and WXKS in Boston, took the place of Leland Conway on December 2, 2013, as Conway returned to WHAS in Louisville, Kentucky.

Weekend programming includes the locally originated programs The Lee Brother's Saturday Show and Home Improvement with Richard McKann. Weekend syndicated programs include two technology shows The Kim Komando Show and The Tech Guy with Leo Laporte, the religious shows God is Just a Prayer Away, The International Gospel Hour, and The Lutheran Hour, and an assortment of other shows and Paid Programming.[13] The Bill Cunningham Show airs on Sunday nights.

WRVA has long been the Richmond-area home for Virginia Cavaliers football and men's basketball; its clear-channel signal brings the Cavaliers to most of the eastern half of North America.

FM translator

On May 5, 2014 WRVA began simulcasting on FM translator W253BI 98.5 Glen Allen, Virginia (via WTVR-FM's HD2 subchannel).[14] The simulcast ended on July 23, 2015 to make way for an HD-fed country station, Big 98.5.

On January 1, 2018, after Entercom acquired the station, WRVA began simulcasting on FM translator W241AP (96.1 MHz) in Midlothian, again using WTVR-FM's HD2 subchannel.[15] The translator had previously rebroadcast Liberty University's WRVL and a classic rock format.[16]

Broadcast translators of WRVA
Call signFrequency
(MHz)		City of licenseFacility
ID		ERP
(W)		Height
(m (ft))		ClassTransmitter coordinatesFCC info
W241AP96.1Midlothian, Virginia139538145255.2 m (837 ft)D37°30′31.5″N 77°34′37.0″WFCC
gollark: I mean, for differing definitions of "GUI".
gollark: It has several.
gollark: Exactly.
gollark: Anyway, it *can't* spread easily over wireless networks because the only thing it had for that was (it's still there but disabled on SC by default) EZCopy, which does disks.
gollark: ... how?

See also

References
  1. "WRVA Facility Record". Federal Communications Commission, audio division.
  2. "WRVA's New Wood Antenna" (PDF). Broadcasting. June 15, 1935. Retrieved 24 October 2014.
  3. "Stronger WRVA Signal Credited to Wood Tower" (PDF). Broadcasting. October 15, 1935. Retrieved 4 November 2014.
  4. "WRVA ad" (PDF). Broadcasting. September 1, 1947. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
  5. "WRVC (FM) Norfolk Begins Programming" (PDF). Broadcasting. June 14, 1948. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  6. "WRVB (FM) in Richmond Is Launched on 94.5 mc" (PDF). Broadcasting. August 23, 1948. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
  7. http://www.bigjohntrimble.com/banner_links/trimble.html
  8. http://www.virginianewsnetwork.com/contact.html
  9. http://www.hibblenradio.com/WRVA.html
  10. Raycom Grabs Lincoln Financial Stations by Michael Malone, Broadcasting & Cable, November 12, 2007
  11. "Entercom Trades Boston & Seattle Spin-Offs To iHeartMedia For Richmond & Chattanooga - RadioInsight". radioinsight.com. 1 November 2017. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
  12. "Consummation Notice". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. December 19, 2017. Retrieved December 21, 2017.
  13. http://www.1140wrva.com/onair/
  14. "WRVA Adds FM Signal - RadioInsight". radioinsight.com. 5 May 2014. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
  15. WRVA Returns to FM Radioinsight - January 4, 2018
  16. http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/new-radio-station-signs-on/Content?oid=1876034
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