WHAS (840 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Louisville, Kentucky and owned by iHeartMedia, Inc.. Its studios are at Fourth Street Live! in downtown Louisville. First licensed in July 1922, it is the oldest radio station in Kentucky.
Its transmitter site is in Long Run, in far east Jefferson County. WHAS operates around the clock on 840 kHz as a 50,000 watt non-directional clear channel station. Its daytime signal can be heard in almost all of central Kentucky, as well as large slices of Ohio and Indiana, providing city-grade coverage as far east as Lexington, as far south as Bowling Green, and as far north as Cincinnati. Its nighttime signal can be heard with a good radio in most of the continental United States and much of Canada.
WHAS is the flagship radio station for the annual WHAS Crusade for Children telethon. The station also broadcasts The Moral Side of the News, one of the oldest public affairs programs in American broadcasting, dating back to the 1940s. The show has also been shown on WHAS-TV since the 1950s. The show's panel of clergy members have been involved in distributing the proceeds of the Crusade for Children among local charities since the telethon's beginning.[2]
The U.S. Department of Commerce, which regulated radio at this time, adopted regulations, effective December 1, 1921, that formally established a broadcast service category. The wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz) was designated for "entertainment" broadcasting, with 485 meters (619 kHz) assigned for "market and weather reports".[5] On July 13, 1922, the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times were issued a license for operation on both the 360- and 485-meter wavelengths. The WHAS call sign was randomly assigned from a sequential roster of available call letters.[6] WHAS was the first broadcasting station in Kentucky, which was the 45th out of the then-48 states to establish a station.[7] Following a short series of test transmissions, WHAS made its formal debut broadcast on July 18, 1922.[8]
In September 1922 the Department of Commerce set aside a second entertainment wavelength, 400 meters (750 kHz) for "Class B" stations, including WHAS, that had quality equipment and programming.[9] In May 1923, additional "Class B" frequencies were made available, with 750 kHz now reserved nationwide for Louisville,[10] which was exclusively assigned to WHAS.[11]
On May 16, 1925, the first live broadcast of the Kentucky Derby horse race was made by WHAS and also by WGN in Chicago.[12] The call of the Derby featured an announcer who watched from the windows of one of the famous twin spires of Churchill Downs.
On November 11, 1928, the Federal Radio Commission's (FRC) General Order 40 made a major reallocation of the broadcasting frequencies. This introduced a category known as "clear channel stations" that included WHAS, which was assigned exclusive nationwide use of 820 kHz.[13] On May 15, 1932, WHAS changed from being a National Broadcasting Company (NBC-Red) affiliate, which it joined in late 1926,[14] and joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), which previously aired on the since-relocated WLAP.[14]: 29 At that time, WHAS operated with 10,000 watts of power, but the output was soon increased to 25,000 watts as authorized by the FRC.[15]
During the Ohio River flood of 1937, the station gained nationwide notice for its coverage of the disaster, which included broadcasting Louisville flood bulletins over the facilities of WSM in Nashville after Louisville authorities were forced to cut electrical power to the city because of the rising flood waters (thus forcing WHAS's own signal off the air). During the flood, the station aired 115,000 messages.[16]
On March 29, 1941, a second major reallocation, as part of the implementation of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement, resulted in WHAS's clear channel frequency being shifted to its current assignment of 840 kHz. In 1950 WHAS helped WSM-TV establish television service in Middle Tennessee with a microwave signal link from WHAS-TV.[17][18]
WHAS was originally part of the local media empire managed by the Bingham family, which also published Louisville Courier-Journal and Louisville Times (now owned by the Gannett Company and merged in 1987) and operated television station WHAS-TV (which, following several mergers and transactions in subsequent years, is now owned by Tegna). WHAS and its FM sister station, WAMZ (the former WHAS-FM) were acquired by Clear Channel Communications (which, as iHeartMedia, continues to own the stations to this day) in 1986 as part of the breakup of the Bingham family's media properties.[22]
Programming evolution
WHAS modernized in the early 1970s from an old-line MOR music outlet into an early form of Hot Adult Contemporary music format, featuring adult-appeal Top 40 hits and rock oldies; one longtime slogan was "Good and Gold" (as in "good music", or adult contemporary, and "golden" oldies). For a time in the 1980s, it was also the Louisville affiliate for Casey Kasem's American Top 40.
On the afternoon of April 3, 1974, Louisville was hit by an F4 tornado that developed during the 1974 Super Outbreak. WHAS broke away from regular programming to track the storm as it passed through the Louisville metropolitan area. In the hours immediately following the storm, the station delivered important information about what areas had been directly impacted by the storms, and traffic reporter Dick Gilbert followed the tornado in his helicopter, reporting on the damage as he flew at a safe distance behind the storm. The station stayed with continuous coverage of the disaster in Louisville and across the state of Kentucky and the southern portion of Indiana until well into the early morning hours of April 4.[23][24] For their efforts, the station's personnel earned thanks from then-Kentucky Governor Wendell Ford and President Richard Nixon.
The station continued to feature a full-service Hot AC format through the 1980s (and was the last 50 kW AM station with a full-time AC format), and by 1995, most of the remaining music programming was oldies-based; this made WHAS one of the last 50,000-watt clear-channel radio stations to feature music programming on a regular basis. Personalities on the weekday lineup have included Terry Meiners on "The Terry Meiners Show"[25] and Lachlan McLean on "SportsTalk 840".
WHAS continued to provide valuable severe weather coverage in the 1990s. On January 17, 1994, a record overnight snowstorm paralyzed the city and much of the state of Kentucky.[26] WHAS had round the clock updates and closings information for nearly a week.[27] On May 28, 1996, another tornado outbreak occurred in Kentuckiana and the station suspended its election coverage that night to cover the storm.[28]
Prior to 1995, WHAS broadcast in C-QUAMAM stereo.[29] Following an initial testing period which started in 2006, beginning in September 2007 WHAS broadcast full-time using the HD RadioIBOCdigital radio system.[30] HD Radio has since been turned off.
The late morning slot (9 a.m. to noon) has seen two changes in recent years. Francene Cucinello hosted "The Francene Show" until her death on January 15, 2010; she was replaced that summer by Mandy Connell. In turn, Connell left in August 2013 to become the morning host on fellow iHeartMedia (then Clear Channel) station KHOW in Denver;[31] her last show on WHAS was on August 9.[32] For several months after her move, Connell provided daily one-minute commentaries, known as "Mandy Minutes", to WHAS.[32] Connell's slot was filled by Leland Conway, previously a talk radio host in Lexington, Kentucky and most recently Richmond, Virginia, whose show began airing on September 16.[33]
Significant changes came to the afternoon and evening lineup in the first half of 2015. In February, McLean announced he would leave WHAS on May 15 and move to Charlotte, North Carolina, where his wife took a corporate position with the Cedar Fair amusement park company.[34] In April, it was confirmed that Sports Talk 840 would end when McLean left WHAS. Effective May 18, Meiners' show was cut back by an hour, ending at 6:00 instead of 7:00. The 6-8 time slot was filled by Connell, who returned to the Louisville market with a locally focused talk show (although it broadcasts from KHOW's studios) until February 2016. Then longtime fill-in host Mary Walter took over as the permanent host and continued the local focused format. The Mark Levin Show moved to the 8-11 slot, being delayed by two hours instead of three,[35] and an extra hour of Ground Zero was picked up.
At the same time as the spring 2015 lineup changes, WHAS replaced The Bill Cunningham Show in its Sunday night lineup with The John and Leah Show, a syndicated weekly news review show hosted by former WHAS personality John Ziegler and Leah Brandon.
^"Radio Conference Recommendations: New Wave Lengths", Radio Age, May 1923, page 11. Beginning with these assignments, radio stations ended the practice of broadcasting their market reports and weather forecasts on the separate 485 meter wavelength.
Credo Fitch Harris (1937). Microphone Memoirs of the Horse and Buggy Days of Radio. Bobbs-Merrill Company. (about WHAS and early radio in general)
Terry L. Birdwhistell (1981). "WHAS Radio and the Development of Broadcasting in Kentucky, 1922-1942". Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. 79 (4): 333–353. JSTOR23379633.
