Months after Radio One’s news/talk WBT shifted its signature news/talk programming to the FM band, uncertainty continues to surround the future of the station’s longtime 1110 AM frequency and its historic transmitter property. That uncertainty has sparked a grassroots campaign by local radio supporters seeking to preserve part of the site, WCNC-TV reports.
Radio One shifted WBT’s programming to the FM dial at the end of 2025, saying it was “thrilled to elevate WBT to the FM dial” and promising to announce future plans for 1110 AM. Since then, the AM signal has carried an instrumental music loop along with recorded messages directing listeners to the station’s FM frequency.
The lack of information has fueled speculation among longtime listeners, including radio weather reporter Johnny Caudle, who recently launched a Change.org petition seeking to preserve part of the station’s historic transmitter property.
“I think that they are probably doing the best they can locally with the cards that they’ve been dealt, but their silence leaves everyone out here to draw conclusions on our own,” Caudle told the TV station. “[We] try to connect the dots and figure out what they’re doing and what’s going to happen to the station.”
Caudle said reports that the transmitter property could be sold prompted him to take action.
“I heard the land was for sale and knowing the radio background industry the way I do, I know that that probably means the towers are going down and the place is going to be bulldozed and redeveloped,” he said. “So I started thinking we need to save something.”
The petition, launched July 1, is not intended to halt a sale of the property, Caudle said, but rather to encourage preservation of its historic features.
“I’m not trying to stop the sale, not trying to stand in the way of the buyer, not to try to take anybody’s rights away,” Caudle said. “We’re just trying to preserve something.”
First licensed in 1922, WBT is recognized as the Carolinas’ first commercial radio station. Although its programming now airs on FM, the 1110 AM facility continues to legally identify as WBT and remains one of the nation’s relatively few 50,000-watt clear-channel AM stations. Its powerful nighttime signal historically reached listeners across much of the eastern U.S., with the station once promoting coverage “from Miami to Maine.”
The station’s reach also gave it strategic importance during the Cold War. WBT Chief Engineer Jerry Dowd said the federal government reinforced the transmitter site so it could continue operating during a national emergency.
“The theory behind this was that should there be an ‘event,’ this would be protected and we would be able to broadcast from it,” Dowd said.
The transmitter complex on Nations Ford Road includes three broadcast towers on approximately 19 acres. A commercial real estate firm is marketing the property as a potential multifamily residential development. Mecklenburg County tax records value the site at nearly $3.5 million. The main facilities building, constructed in 1932, also contains a Cold War-era fallout shelter installed in 1963.
The TV station’s report says the AM station continues broadcasting its promotional loop. Radio One and the property’s real estate broker have not publicly outlined plans for the frequency or the transmitter site.