Welcome to The WROV History Website

The WROV Control Room Telephone*.

It has been a labor of love. If you've never been here before—especially if you're someone who grew up listening to WROV—you will probably want to select (from the menu on the left) the page corresponding to the era when you started listening. Otherwise, if you have time, start at "The Beginning" (1946 - 1949) and go from there. It's one heck of a story. Or perhaps you'll want to visit the audio pages and hear some old memories. Or check out the old press clippings in "The Archive" or see the old Musicards. There's no hurry. Come back often. Enjoy yourself.

The WROV History Website went online in November, 2004 at the exact time the former WROV Studios at 15th Street and Cleveland Avenue were torn down in a "phoenix rising" sort of way. It is maintained by a former WROV personality who—much as the Wizard of Oz—really prefers for you to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. But if you must know more, go here for the story. Since its creation it has continued to grow and remains a work in progress. There's more to add, more work to do, and hopefully many more old relics to unearth and work into the story. So keep checking back!

If YOU have any memories, photos or other momentos to contribute, PLEASE DO (see bottom of page for contact info). There's a "want list" of things we are REALLY looking for on the site. Head up to the attic and start digging. Depending on what you dig up, we might even offer you some $$$ for it but that's for US to decide. Thanks again for visiting. Enjoy it. And, in the words of a couple of very famous guys: "We wish you blue skies and green lights. Never whittle toward yourself or spit into the wind. Good night, America."

Note: this isn't a "clickable" link, type the address in the "To:" field.
Done intentionally this way to thwart those who seek to spam!

• The WROV History Site primarily covers the first forty-two years of the radio station, beginning with its birth in 1946 and ending when the Levines sold it in 1988. We hope to someday cover the next ten years going up to September, 1998 when the WROV call letters became exclusively those of the FM station and the AM became WGMN. This will require the help of some of the folks who were there during that period, many of them are our friends and have agreed to do so. For now we'll just cover those years briefly in the "Epilogue" section.
• The material is presented as an historical tribute and complies with current copyright laws regarding "Fair Use" and "Incidental Use" of copyrighted material. Information presented on this site is for research and enjoyment only.
• The current management of WROV-FM has given us permission to do this site, assisted with its creation and development, and they link to it from their official website. In Star Trek parlance, we're the original series and they are the next generation. We left them some pretty big shoes to fill and they have carried on the tradition with honor.
• This website does not download spyware, tracking cookies, etc. to your machine. We aren't collecting any sort of marketing information about you, and we promise that your visit here will not cause somebody to show up at your door tomorrow selling vacuum cleaners.

• The site must be viewed on a PC with screen resolution set to 800 x 600 or larger. Anything smaller and you will get scroll bars. It looks best at 1024 x 768.
• Hopefully you have a high speed internet connection. Otherwise, loading some of the pages may take a while and the audio files won't stream.
• Pictures: most of them have larger versions that you can see by clicking them. Hover the mouse cursor over a picture and if it turns from an arrow into a little pointy finger (depending on your settings) there's a larger version to be seen.
• JavaScript MUST be enabled in your browser!
• There's a jingle that plays when you visit/refresh the home page but we're finding that it isn't compatible with all web browsers. It seems to work with best with IE. One of these days we'll write a script to fix this.
• If YOU find any bad links, errors, typos, etc PLEASE let us know!

* - Oh yeah. The phone. Whenever you called us, this was the one we answered. The buttons were (in order) 343-4444 (business line); 343-4445 (roll over); 343-4446 (roll over); 343-4447 (the employee hot line with the red button); 982-1240 (request line); 982-1246 (roll over); 345-NEWS (News Line); Internal (used for dialing other employees' extensions); the HOLD button. Note that these numbers NO LONGER BELONG to the AM or FM station so PLEASE don't call them now. You won't win any prizes.