Radio WCLG

WCLG is an Oldies and Classic rock formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Morgantown, West Virginia, serving the Morgantown, West Virginia and Monongalia County, West Virginia area. WCLG is owned and operated by Bowers Broadcasting Corporation.

WCLG went on the air in 1954 in Morgantown, West Virginia. It was licensed to C. Leslie Golliday, from which it derived its call letters, and operated with an initial power of 500 watts at 1300 on the AM dial. Studios were located on High Street, with transmitter on Jackson Street in Westover, WV. In 1955, the station increased its power to 1,000 watts and at that time billed itself as "Morgantown's most powerful radio station."

Owner Leslie Golliday, a prominent Martinsburg, WV businessman, envisioned a group of stations in the state, and his early announcers used the tag line, "This is the Mountaineer station for northern West Virginia." His station in Martinsburg used the tag line, "This is the Mountaineer station for the Eastern Panhandle," thus the call sign there of WEPM.

The station's early programming featured a variety of music formats and a strong local tie-in to the community through audience participation shows and local news coverage. Country and western air personalities such as Shorty King, brother Charlie Arnett, and Matt Maddox anchored several hours each morning of such music, while Golliday himself broadcast weekend programs that featured both semi-classical and classical music. Telephone technology of that day included phone-in quiz shows, a buy, sell, and trade program, and daily phoned in reports from city, county, and state police agencies as well as the city fire department and Department of Employment Security.

Among the station's first news announcers was Jim Snyder, later to gain acclaim as Jim Slade with the Westinghouse, Mutual, and ABC News networks. In 1959, the station placed the first mobile news unit on the streets of Morgantown, with capability of direct on-scene broadcasting from news events. The Associated Press in 1969 honored the WCLG News Department with its "spot news of the year award," giving the AP a considerable national beat on the Farmington Number 9 coal mine disaster in November 1968, which entombed 78 miners.

In 1959, the station was purchased by William and Eleanor Freed; then in 1983, it again changed hands, moving into the ownership of Garry Bowers. Bowers had been with the station since 1958, when he began as an announcer while a student at West Virginia University.