Earlier this year in 2024, KWRE AM 730 in Warrenton, MO celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary. It is hard today to appreciate the miracle of the transmission of a simple radio broadcast. Not much of a miracle, you say? After all, smart phones bring us websites and pictures, text messages, phone calls and GPS with the convenience of a simple tap-and-click. Yet behind the scenes, all of that wireless communication is traveling on an electromagnetic wave – a radio wave.
Radio waves have existed for all eternity, since the birth of the cosmos. Whether you had a radio or not, they were out there racing through the vastness of space at the speed of light; slip-sliding through the Aether, bouncing off everything in a perpetual cacophony of invisible mayhem. Radio waves were in the air in 1864 when Scottish physicist James Maxwell predicted, through mathematical calculations, that they would be found. They were in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia in 1886 when Mahlon Loomis sent signals between two kites equipped with copper wire tails. And they were happy to oblige on March 5th, 1949, when KWRE – AM 730 went on the air in Warrenton, Missouri.
Today’s cell phone is the evolution of the old, tube radios that our ancestors gathered round to listen to FDR’s fireside chats. TV is essentially radio with pictures. WiFi? You guessed it. All using the radio frequency spectrum. We even use radio transmission to speak to the Voyager 1 spacecraft which is now 15 billion miles from earth. It takes twenty-three hours for our outbound signal to reach Voyager and twenty-three hours more to get a response. Now that’s miraculous!
For a bit of perspective, the world’s first commercial radio broadcast carried the results of Harding’s victory in the presidential election of 1920 on KDKA AM 1020 in Pittsburgh, PA. True commercial radio broadcasting began in 1922. Between 1922 and 1923, the number of licensed stations rose from thirty to 556 and there were about 500,000 radios out there listening. After World War II there was an overwhelming demand for new AM, FM, and television licenses. Today there are 33,305 broadcast radio stations licensed by the FCC.
In 1949, one of those post war applications for an AM radio station was granted to William T. Zimmerman, putting KWRE – AM 730 in Warrenton, Missouri on the air. At 250 watts the station covered the surrounding area outside of St. Louis. The transmitter was upgraded to 500 watts in 1952 and again to 1000 watts in 1961, which is its current power. The station’s broadcast footprint includes Warren, Lincoln, Washington, St. Charles, Montgomery. Franklin and Gasconade counties.
Ownership of the station has changed hands over the years: Zimmerman sold to K.W.R. E. Radio Inc in 1959; then Glenayre Broadcasting Company took over in 1961; and finally Kaspar Broadcasting of Missouri bought out Glenayre to acquire 100% of the ownership in 1966. Verne Kaspar passed in 2018 at the age of 95 and his son, Steve, took over operations of the station. Steve Kaspar passed on September 5th, 2024 at the age of 71. Steve’s son, Ryan, will assume control going forward.
According to KWRE program director and morning show host Mike Thomas, programming for KWRE has been steadfastly anchored in the country music genre from the beginning. “We are more polished these days, but we have stayed in our lane. Although in 1960 a guy bought it and started playing rock and roll. People threatened to burn it down. We have that hometown feel and try not to be too slick,” In addition to music programming, Thomas says Verne Kaspar made sure that KWRE provided local information as a service to the community. “He was a very business-oriented man. He had a vision for the station and wanted it to be an information resource for the community,” Thomas explained.
Verne Kaspar traveled extensively and personally interviewed many world leaders including Saudi King Abdula, Yasser Arafat, Bishop Tutu, Poland president Jaruzelski, King of Jordan, and Dwight D. Eisenhower. He traveled behind the iron curtain before the Berlin wall was torn down in 1989 and advocated for the normalization of relations with Cuba. One mark of Verne Kaspar’s personal philosophy was that all the metered mail going from Kaspar Broadcasting bore the slogan “Responsibility safeguards freedom.”
Born in 1922, Verne Kaspar received his FCC License at the age of 13 and was a former board member of the National Broadcast Editorial Association. He was inducted into the Indiana Broadcasters Hall of Fame in October 2004.
Signing on in 1986, Thomas worked closely with Vernon Kaspar to create a station that celebrates country music. “In 1975, Verne hired Roy Queen, the self-proclaimed “Grandaddy of Country Music”, who was the first country music DJ in St. Louis. Roy had the Queen Arena which is now the Elks Lodge,” says Thomas. “He was a big deal and brought a loyal following to our station for twenty-five years.” A recording of the intro to Queen’s radio show can be found at The Country Music Hall of Fame.
Queen’s career in radio began at the age of 16 in 1929, yodeling and playing his guitar on KMOX. Playing on shows like “Uncle Dick Slack’s Barn Dance”, Queen made many personal appearances in addition to his musical performances at the station. Early on he was an entertainer on KMOX and KWIL in St. Louis and later worked as a disc jockey on KXLW and KWRE. Roy Queen was inducted into both the Missouri Radio Hall of Fame and the Missouri Country Music Hall of Fame.
KWRE has long been a highway for country music stars and Thomas is grateful to have been along for the ride. “I’ve had the pleasure to meet and interview some of my heroes. People like Loretta Lynn, Fess Parker, Earl Hamner and Al Lewis (Grandpa Munster),” he says fondly.
“He also had standards. For example, he would not play “Grandma Got Runover by a Reindeer” or Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It. He found those types of songs offensive. He was a very conservative guy that way.”
Like any music format, country music has evolved over the decades. From Gid Turner and the Skillet Lickers in the 1920’s through Roy Acuff and the Grand Ole Opry, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Dolly, Willy and Waylon – the list of country music stars is too long to detail here. Inevitably though, genres merge and rock and roll began to ripple through, acting as a catalyst for change at KWRE.
“Times change,” says Thomas. “In the 90s, country music was starting to splinter, it was getting rocky. So, I suggested we create a platform for newer artists while maintaining KWRE for the classics. Verne agreed,” In 1996, Kaspar created a second station KFAV 99.9 FM, to give old and new generations of listeners what they wanted.
Kaspar also believed that the news media is the fourth branch of government. As a result, KWRE maintains its service to the community Adding shows like Livewire – an interview program bringing discussions with local politicians, entertainers and artists to the fore – make KWRE more than just a spot on the dial for music. Listeners can write in questions which will be included live on the air.
So how does a station like KWRE face the challenges of the radio broadcast industry to come? One of the biggest hurdles will be the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to the medium. In testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law in January of this year, National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt outlined both the perceived benefits and potential pitfalls of AI in broadcasting.
“Study after study shows that local broadcasters are the most trusted source of news and information. Our investigative reports have received countless awards for exemplifying the importance and impact of journalism as a service to the community. This includes KMOX Radio and KMOV-TV in St. Louis, which were also recently honored with Murrow awards for their accurate and heartfelt reporting of a deadly school shooting. Stories like these are the antidote to the misinformation and disinformation that thrives online,” LeGeyt stated.
“Broadcasters will build on this trust by embracing new AI tools that will help our journalists, particularly when it comes to delivering breaking news and emergency information. For example, one broadcaster is piloting a tool that will use AI to quickly cull through inbound tips from email and social media to produce recommendations that they can verify and turn into impactful stories. Other broadcasters are using AI to translate their stories into other languages to better serve diverse audiences. When AI can help these local journalists – real people – perform their jobs in their communities, we welcome it.”
LeGeyt also pointed out three potential areas of concern to the committee.
First, the use of news content generated by AI models without authorization, diminishes trust. “Broadcasters have already seen numerous examples where content created by our journalists has been ingested and regurgitated by AI bots, with little or no attribution,” he told the committee. In July, the FCC proposed adding a disclaimer to political ads noting whether AI was used in part or in whole to generate the ad. Curiously enough, NAB opposed the move, saying a blanket disclaimer for all uses of AI would likely mislead the public into thinking every ad is suspicious, making it harder to identify genuinely misleading content.
LeGeyt also noted that the use of AI to doctor, manipulate or misappropriate the likeness of trusted radio or television personalities risks spreading misinformation or even perpetrating fraud. “To give a recent illustration, following the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, fake photos and videos reached an unprecedented level on social media in a matter of minutes. Of the thousands of videos that one broadcast network sifted through to report on the attacks, only 10% of them were authentic and usable,” he testified.
Thomas said that what has made KWRE successful in the past bodes well for the future. Live radio, locally focused programming is the key.
“In fact, our biggest audience, over 10,000 listeners, tunes in every day for live bingo that we call Radio Bingo. We actually have the bingo cage in the studio and pull the numbers live on the air. The winner gets seventy-three dollars,” Thomas says proudly. You can still find your lost dog or post that you found one on the Pet Patrol section of the station’s website. And the station runs an online auction for restaurant specials, groceries as well as miscellaneous items like chainsaws, lawn mowers and passes to county fairs.
If the invention of the printing press in 1440 enlightened the world, wireless radio let the genie out of the bottle in the 20th century. You may marvel at today’s Hadron particle collider, nano technology or even a great video game, but modulating a human voice onto an electromagnetic wave and selling soap is one of the momentous achievements in the history of the solar system. And after seventy-five years, KWRE has shown us that being true to your audience is the formula for success regardless of the changing times.
