WBT (AM)
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WBT (known on air as News Talk 1110) is a 50,000 watt clear-channel radio station in Charlotte, North Carolina, broadcasting at 1110 kHz. It is owned by insurance giant Lincoln Financial Group, who acquired former owner Jefferson-Pilot in 2006, along with CBS television affiliate WBTV and WLNK-FM.
History
The station dates to December 1920, when Fred Laxton, Earle Gluck and Fred Bunker set up an amateur radio station in Laxton's home. Four months later, the station received an experimental license as 4XD. The trio decided to go commercial in 1922, and incorporated as the Southern Radio Corporation. In April, the station signed on as the first fully-licensed radio station south of Washington, D.C. WSB in Atlanta was the first station in the Southeast to actually broadcast, a month before WBT. However, the Commerce Department only authorized WSB to broadcast weather reports until it received its license a few months after WBT.WBT began its long association with CBS in 1929, when the two-year-old network bought the station. A series of power increases brought the station to its current 50,000 watts. New FCC regulations forced CBS to sell the station to Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company, forerunner of Jefferson-Pilot, in 1945. Four years later, WBTV signed on.
In 1925, Freeman Gosden and Charlie Correll started a comedy show on WBT that was a forerunner to Amos and Andy. Russ Hodges, later famous as the radio voice of the New York/San Francisco Giants, started his career at WBT.
WBT's unusual diamond-shaped antennas, located in Charlotte (called Blaw-Knox Towers) make up three of only eight still operational in the United States. In the morning hours of September 22, 1989 Hurricane Hugo slammed into Charlotte. The storm severely damaged two of WBT's towers and nearly killed station engineer Bob White. The FCC approved WBT to operate on a full-power non-directional pattern for the next year while the two damaged towers were rebuilt.
In 2005, Jefferson-Pilot agreed to merge with Lincoln Financial Group, a Philadelphia-based financial services and insurance conglomerate.
Broadcasting
Despite its clear-channel status, WBT's signal is spotty at best in some parts of the Charlotte metropolitan area at night because it must adjust its coverage at sundown to protect co-located KFAB in Omaha, Nebraska. Even though WBT must direct its signal north-south as a result, it still reaches parts of 22 states--including much of the country east of the Mississippi River--and two Canadian provinces at night. In 1995, it bought WBZK-FM, a 7,600 watt station in Chester, South Carolina broadcasting at 99.3 mHz, to improve its nighttime coverage in the Charlotte area and later changed the calls to WBT-FM.Programming
WBT is the flagship station of the Carolina Panthers, as well as the local outlet for the North Carolina Tar Heels, Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, Coast to Coast AM and Clark Howard. It was the flagship of the Charlotte Hornets from the team's debut in 1988 until the team moved to New Orleans in 2002. Local talent on the station includes the much acclaimed "Charlotte's Morning News" with Al Gardner and Stacey Simms, as well as Keith Larson, John Hancock, and Jason Lewis.Past hosts include the beloved Henry Boggan, who passed away in April, 2006, Jerry Klein, Danny Fontana, Don Russell, H.A. Thompson, Bob Lacey and Richard Spires and Brad Krantz.
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