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WWVA is an American radio station that broadcasts on a frequency of 1170 kHz with studios in Wheeling, West Virginia, and towers formerly located in St. Clairsville, Ohio, before they were destroyed in an August 2010 storm. The station is currently operating with reduced power due to the damage.
When on the air, it is West Virginia's only class A 50,000 watt clear-channel station, sharing the frequency with KFAQ in Tulsa, Oklahoma. WWVA can be heard in most of the eastern two-thirds of the United States at night, as well as most of Canada. The station is currently owned by Clear Channel Communications and uses the on-air nickname "The Big One".
WWVA was one of the first stations in the US to have an in-studio Citizens' Band Radio to talk to listeners at night, in between songs and other on-air items, during the 1970s when it produced and ran an in-house nightly truckers' show hosted by the popular radio personality, Buddy Ray. Ray left the station in the early 1980s.
In two instances has WWVA been threatened with relocation, neither being successful: first in 1930 to Charleston by then-owner West Virginia Broadcasting Corporation, and again in 2004 to Stow, Ohio by Clear Channel Communications.
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