| By Bob Weaver
By Bob Weaver
A generation of Calhoun folk would edge close to their battery operated AM radio
and fine tune their instrument to WWVA in Wheeling, the state's only 50,000 watt radio
station, to be intrigued by pickin' and singin' on the Saturday night WWVA
Jamboree.
WWVA, next to the Grand Ole Opry on Nashville's WSM, has been the big country
music station in America, its signal pushed up and down the east coast and north
of the Canadian border.
Hundreds of thousands of country music fans have flocked to Wheeling on tour
buses and private cars during the stations 70 year history. It has been a boom to
the Wheeling economy.
Calhoun's McCumbers brothers use to perform on the Jamboree and Jamboree
acts would come to Calhoun and perform.
Stations like WPDX in Clarksburg and WMMN in Fairmont, now gone, provided live
entertainment at the Orma Theater, the Kanawha Theater and the Log Cabin
Park at Mt. Zion.
Now the station's new owners want to move it to the Cleveland-Akron area.
Clear Channel, which has bought up thousands of local radio stations, has filed a
license change with the FCC. The application wants the station moved to Stowe,
Ohio, but the owners have denied they are making the change.
The FCC has been changing and trying to change the rules where large corporations can
own lots of media outlets, even the radio, TV and newspapers within a single
community.
The corporations and the FCC say this is good for the public, claiming they will do
a better job because they have more financial resources to provide better
programming.
Local radio in America is dying, and in most communities it is already dead.
Clear Channel has already replaced most of the WWVA radio personalities and
essentially gutted their well-established news department.
Most of their programming comes by satellite.
Officials in the City of Wheeling say they will do all they can to prevent legendary
radio station WWVA from leaving the city.
Meanwhile, get ready for more of that canned sound to
make your life more cheerful.
Live announcers could soon be broadcasting from India and China, outsourced to
better serve you.
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