WORD (AM)

WORD (950 AM) is a radio station in Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA with a news/talk format. It is simulcast with WYRD-AM in Greenville, South Carolina. 950 WORD's transmitter is located near the Spartanburg Community College campus (3 miles NW of downtown Spartanburg) at 245 Broadcast Drive (Business I-85 @ exit 3). Its general coverage area is from Gaffney to Greer (Spartanburg Metro). Newsradio 1330/950 WORD carries Russ and Lisa, Mike Gallagher, Coast to Coast AM, Rush Limbaugh, Kim Komando, Lars Larson, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Bob McLain.

950 WORD's transmitter

History

WSPA 950 AM signed on the air February 17th, 1930 as South Carolina's first radio station, beating out WCSC/Charleston and WIS/Columbia by several months. The station was owned by Virgil Evans during it's first 10 years on the air. WSPA was sold on June 1st, 1940 to the Spartanburg Advertising Company, a group that was formed with the intention on starting a second radio station in Spartanburg, WORD 910 AM, which signed on in September of that year utilizing studio and tower space from WSPA. In 1944 the FCC ordered the WSPA-WORD combo to be broken up due to ownership regulations which forbid an owner from having no more than one AM station per market. This was completed on March 17th, 1947 when WSPA-AM and FM was sold to Liberty Life Insurance and WORD was sold to Spartan Radiocasting (WSPA-FM 98.9 FM signed on as South Carolina's first FM station on August 29th, 1946) In 1952, a dispute erupted between both Sparta Radiocasting and Liberty Life over a proposed allocation for VHF TV channel 7 in Spartanburg. It was settled in 1958 when Sparta Radiocasting bought back WSPA-AM and FM from Liberty Life Insurance and spinning off WORD and their FM sister WDXY 100.5 to different ownership.

External links

• WORD/WYRD's website
• Query the FCC's AM station database for WORD-AM
• Radio-Locator.com entry on WORD-AM