WHVO Radio signed on the air on Sunday afternoon, September 19, 1954.
It was a 45-minute program at 3:00 in the afternoon that featured every staff member and every show to be broadcast on Hopkinsville’s newest 1,000-watt radio station.
Co-owner and station manager Charles Stratton said at the time, the station would place an emphasis on news and music, special interest programming each morning, and complete cooperation with civic clubs, churches, and non-profit organizations.
70 years later, that same blueprint is in use for what is now WHVO Radio.
Boyd Clark, who began at the station in 1964, said WKOA 1480 AM signed on the air in the Holland Building in downtown Hopkinsville with a tower located on Pardue Lane near the former Owen Lumber Company.
click to download audioThe staff on that first day included Walter “Bruno” Wilson, as chief engineer and announcer. Other on-air personalities included Noble Hall Jr. and Don Ritter as well as farm director Bob McGaughey. Marie Harte was the advertising manager, and Betty Doss was the receptionist.
The first voice heard on WKOA that day was from a young ad salesman named Robert Carter, who later became the publisher and president of the Kentucky New Era.
Clark said it was McGaughey who got him his first job in radio and said there have been a noted roll call of people who have worked for the station.
click to download audioClark went into banking for several years but returned to WHVO in 2011 until his retirement in 2020.
Within a few years after WKOA signed on the air, the music that we now know as Rock and Roll came of age. It was on WKOA that many people heard Elvis Presley, The Drifters, the Supremes, the Everly Brothers, the Righteous Brothers, and other greats of the Rock and Roll era.
Maybe it was the rock and roll that caused part of the building the studios were housed in to partially collapse in the late 1960s as remembered by Vern Brewer.
click to download audioWKOA moved from its South Virginia Street location to a showcase studio in the old First City Bank building in 1975.
After several changes to the format and call letters, the radio station was purchased by Ham Broadcasting in 1996 with an oldies music format adopted.
Because the call letters WKOA were taken by a radio station in Lafayette, Indiana in 1994, the call letters WHVO — which stand for We’re Hoptown’s Very Own — were selected, along with a drawing of the town clock on the logo to underscore the station’s local operation.
The late D.J. Everett, who purchased the station, said in a 2010 interview that news on the radio was important to him and would be a hallmark of the station.
click to download audioEverett said one of the most important pieces of programming on WHVO after the purchase was the broadcast of Fort Campbell High School football, who won three Class 2A state titles from 2007-09. The game broadcasts were streamed on the internet to soldiers around the world.
click to download audioOver a decade ago, Ham Broadcasting signed on a low-powered translator for the purpose of simulcasting WHVO’s programming onto the FM dial at 96.5FM.
Thursday’s programming will include a retrospective of WKOA and WHVO with familiar voices on the radio throughout the day.
