Avco Broadcasting
| Public | |
| Fate | Assets divided |
| Successor | Avco Broadcasting |
| Founded | March 22, 1922 (with the sign-on of WLW) |
| Founder | Powel Crosley, Jr. |
| Defunct | 1968 |
| Headquarters | Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S |
The Crosley Broadcasting Corporation was a radio and television broadcaster founded by radio manufacturing pioneer Powel Crosley, Jr.. The company was an early operator of radio stations in the United States. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Crosley's flagship station was WLW (AM). Most of its broadcast properties adopted callsigns in which the first three letters were "WLW", which stood for "[the] World's Largest Wattage". In the 1930s, WLW had an effective power of 500,000 Watts (later surpassed by Radio Moscow). By the 1950s, the company would operate a small television network in the eastern Midwest.
During World War II, Crosley built the Bethany Relay Station in Butler County, Ohio's Union Township, one mile west of its transmitter for WLW, for the Office of War Information. It operated as many as five shortwave stations, using the callsigns WLWK, WLWL, WLWO, WLWR and WLWS. It operated the facility for the government until 1963.
In 1945, the Crosley interests were purchased by Aviation Corporation. The radio and appliance manufacturing arm changed its name to Avco, but the broadcast operations continued to operate under the Crosley name until they adopted the Avco name in 1968.
Crosley (Avco) also owned WLWF, an FM station it operated along with its WLWC (now WCMH-TV). WLWF went silent in 1953, and Crosley (Avco) returned its license to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In the late 1950s, a construction permit for a new station on WLWF's frequency was granted to Taft Broadcasting, owner of WTVN-TV also in Columbus (now WSYX-TV), who signed on the station in late 1959 as WTVN-FM (it is now WLVQ-FM).
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