WWVA (1170 kHz, NewsRadio 1170) is an American AM radio station that broadcasts with studios in Wheeling, West Virginia. Its towers are located in St. Clairsville, Ohio. It is West Virginia's only class A 50,000–watt clear-channel station, sharing the frequency's Class A status with KTSB in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and KJNP in North Pole, Alaska. WWVA can be heard in most of the eastern two-thirds of the United States at night, as well as most of Canada. The station is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. and uses the on-air nickname "The Big One" (borrowed from sister stations WLW and WTAM). WWVA was one of the first stations in the U.S. to have an in-studio Citizens band radio to talk to listeners at night, in between songs and other on-air items, during the 1970s when it produced and ran an in-house nightly truckers' show hosted by the popular radio personality, Buddy Ray. Ray left the station in the early 1980s. In two instances has WWVA been threatened with relocation, neither being successful: first in 1930 to Charleston by then-owner West Virginia Broadcasting Corporation, and again in 2004 to Stow, Ohio (a suburb of Akron) by then-Clear Channel Communications. WWVA is one of the Local Primary 1 Emergency Alert System stations in the Wheeling area. History WWVA began broadcasting at 2 a.m. on December 13, 1926 when John Stroebel threw the switch that sent power to a home-built 50-watt transmitter in the basement of his home. One week earlier, the Federal Radio Commission had granted a broadcast license on 860 kHz to the radio station WWVA. In its first year of operation, it broadcast to listeners with home-made crystal sets, principally from Stroebel's own home. The call letters are derived from the words Wheeling, West Virginia (WWVA) as U.S. postal codes were once written out with three letters such as WVA for West Virginia, hence Wheeling, WVA became "WWVA." Through the years, WWVA has been granted several power increases. In May 1941, the FCC moved WWVA to 1170, and in August of that same year, granted it the highest power for AM stations: 50,000 watts. With the increase, WWVA became the most powerful AM station in the entire state of West Virginia. WWVA has changed hands many times over the years. Past owners include Fidelity Investments, West Virginia Broadcasting Corporation, Storer Broadcasting, Basic Communications, Screen Gems Radio - a division of Columbia Pictures, Coca-Cola,