WHAS (840 kHz) is an AM radio station owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. and licensed to Louisville, Kentucky. Its studios are located in the Louisville enclave of Watterson Park, and the transmitter site is in Long Run, in far east Jefferson County. First licensed in July 1922, it is the oldest radio station in Kentucky.
WHAS is a clear channel station, operating around the clock on 840 kHz with 50,000 watts. 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. Secondary coverage extends as far as Nashville, Dayton, and Indianapolis. The nighttime signal can be heard with a good radio in most of the continental United States and much of Canada, and at times in other countries.
Since September 2007 WHAS has also broadcast full-time using the HD Radio IBOC digital radio system, following an initial testing period which started in 2006. HD Radio has since been turned off. Prior to 1995, WHAS broadcast in C-QUAM AM stereo.
History
The U.S. Department of Commerce, which regulated radio communication at this time, adopted regulations, effective December 1, 1921, that formally established a broadcast service category, designating the wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz) for "entertainment" broadcasting, and 485 meters (619 kHz) for "market and weather reports". On July 13, 1922, the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times were issued a license for the first broadcasting station in Kentucky, which was assigned the sequentially issued call letters of WHAS, for operation on both the 360- and 485-meter wavelengths. Kentucky was the 45th out of the then-48 states to establish a broadcasting station.
Following a short series of test transmissions, WHAS made its formal debut broadcast on July 18, 1922. On May 16, 1925, the first live broadcast of the Kentucky Derby horse race was made by WHAS and also by WGN in Chicago. 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. On May 15, 1932, WHAS changed from being a National Broadcasting Company (NBC-Red) affiliate and joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). 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. 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.
The station was originally part of the local media empire ruled 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.
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. 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.
Recent history
Today the station features The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, The Mark Levin Show (delayed by 2 hours), the last two hours of the national broadcast of Ground Zero, and Coast to Coast AM (live) on its daily lineup. Some other personalities on the weekday lineup have included Terry Meiners on "The Terry Meiners Show" and Lachlan McLean on "SportsTalk 840".