WHO (AM)

WHO is a iHeartMedia radio station broadcasting 50,000 watts on 1040 AM from Des Moines, Iowa with a news/talk format. The station is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The station can be heard over most of the continental United States during nighttime hours. During daytime hours, its transmitter power and Iowa's flat land (with near-perfect soil conductivity) allows it to be heard in almost all of Iowa, as well as parts of Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, and Wisconsin.

History

WHO first began broadcasting on April 11, 1924, from the top floor of the Liberty Building in downtown Des Moines. The station was originally owned by Bankers Life, which is now the Principal Financial Group. After the FRC's General Order 40 reallocated frequencies in 1928, WHO ended up sharing time on the same frequency with WOC in Davenport. In 1930, B. J. Palmer, owner of WOC, bought WHO, and the two stations operated together as WOC-WHO until a new 50,000-watt transmitter near Mitchellville began operating on November 11, 1933. (WOC ceased broadcasting that day but returned on another frequency a year later.) WHO moved from 1000 AM to the current 1040 AM on March 29, 1941, as a result of the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement. Today WHO is one of only two 50,000-watt AM radio stations in Iowa (KXEL in Waterloo is the other, however, it is not on a "1928 Band Plan" clear channel like WHO, but is on a NARBA band plan clear channel, dually allocated to The Bahamas (Class I-A) and to Waterloo, IA (Class I-B)), though WHO's signal is non-directional and KXEL's is directional, as are most, but not all Class I-Bs.