WOC (1420 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station, licensed to Davenport, Iowa, and serving the Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois. WOC is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. It broadcasts a news/talk format, under the slogan "The Quad Cities News Leader." Its studios are located at 3535 East Kimberly Road in Davenport (along with co-owned KCQQ, KMXG, KUUL, WFXN and WLLR-FM). Its transmitter is located at an antenna farm in Bettendorf, Iowa, near the campus of Scott Community College. (WOC is the only remaining AM station at this site, as all the other transmitters are for FM radio or television.) WOC broadcasts with 5,000 watts with a directional signal to avoid interfering with other stations on 1420 kHz.
WOC's most famous former employee was future U.S. President Ronald "Dutch" Reagan, who got his start in radio there in 1932, broadcasting football games, after having played football at Eureka College in nearby Eureka, Illinois.
Programming
WOC broadcasts both local and nationally syndicated talk shows, most of which come from Premiere Networks, a subsidiary of iHeartMedia. Weekends feature shows on money, home repair, computers and law. Syndicated programming includes Kim Komando, Handel on the Law, At Home with Gary Sullivan, Our American Stories, and Jill on Money. Some weekday shows are repeated and some hours are paid brokered programming. Fox News Radio supplies national news at the beginning of each hour. The station also carries University of Iowa sports.
Pre-history
WOC's pre-history was complex, with roots extending back to the earliest days of radio.
Robert K. Karlowa had an longtime interest in radiotelegraphy, starting in 1907, and by early 1913 was "the chief operator of the Tri-Cities Wireless club", which met on the sixth floor of the Best Building in Rock Island, Illinois. In mid-1915, he and Ray E. Hall, representing the Tri-City Radio Laboratory, were issued an Experimental license for station 9XR, which also operated from the Best Building. This station used a spark transmitter and could only transmit Morse code, so it was never used for entertainment broadcasts. Moreover, effective April 6, 1917, with the entrance of the United States into World War One, all civilian stations were ordered to shut down for the duration of the war, and 9XR permanently disappeared.
The civilian ban on radio stations was lifted in October 1919, and the introduction of vacuum-tube radio transmitters now made audio broadcasts possible. Karlowa's subsequent activities were divided between two separate stations. Karlowa himself was issued a standard amateur license, with call sign 9BC, for his home in Davenport, Iowa. On December 3, 1919, he began broadcasting a series of radio concerts.
A second standard amateur license, 9BY, was issued in the name of the Young & McCombs co-operative store, located in the Best Building in Rock Island, Illinois, where Karlowa was the head of the radio department. This station would feature an even more extensive selection of programs. It was announced that, starting about September 1, 1920, 9BY was planning to inaugurate concerts to be broadcast on Thursday evenings. A few weeks later, on election day, November 2, the station was reported to be planning to broadcast election results, and later that month it was reported that 9BY's weekly broadcasts featured promotional phonograph records provided by the Pathé Frères Phonograph Company.
In early 1921, Karlowa formed the Karlowa Radio Corporation, which bought the Young & Combs radio department assets, and took over operation of 9BY, still located in the Best Building in Rock Island. The station maintained its Thursday evening concert schedule.
WOC history
WOC's history is also complex. Effective December 1, 1921, the U.S. government adopted a regulation requiring that stations making broadcasts intended for the public now had to hold a Limited Commercial license. On February 18, 1922, the Karlowa Radio Corporation was issued a new license, for a broadcasting station with the randomly assigned call letters of WOC, still located in the Rock Island Best Building. Karlowa continued to operate the station for a short time, but the costs had become too great. In March he sold WOC to Col. B. J. Palmer, and on May 9, 1922, a new license was issued for the Palmer School of Chiropractic (later the Palmer College of Chiropractic) in Davenport, Iowa, the start of a family connection that lasted almost 75 years.