WBT (AM)

WBT (1110 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station serving the Charlotte metropolitan area, including parts of North Carolina and South Carolina. First licensed on March 18, 1922, it was one of America's first radio stations.

WBT is owned by Urban One, with studios and offices located off West Morehead Street, just west of Uptown Charlotte, co-located with the city's CBS television affiliate, WBTV, currently owned by Gray Media but at one time co-owned with WBT Radio.

WBT's transmission towers are three of only eight operational diamond-shaped Blaw-Knox towers in the United States. The station broadcasts 50,000 watts around the clock as the only Class A clear-channel station in the Carolinas. Its transmitter site is located in south Charlotte, off Nations Ford Road. A single non-directional antenna radiates the transmitter's full power during the day. Its daytime coverage is not nearly as large as those of other 50,000-watt stations, due to the Carolinas' poor ground conductivity; some outer suburbs such as Statesville, Shelby, and Salisbury only get a grade B signal. Despite this, it provides at least secondary coverage as far north as the eastern Piedmont Triad, as far west as the eastern portion of the Upstate, as far east as the Pee Dee and as far south as the Columbia suburbs. Under the right conditions, it can be heard well into the more mountainous areas of the Carolinas, as well as the Sandhills. At night, all three towers are used in a directional pattern that limits its signal toward the west, to avoid interfering with KFAB in Omaha, Nebraska, the other Class A station on the frequency. Even with this restriction, it can be heard across much of the eastern half of North America with a good radio. For many years, WBT boasted that it could be heard "from Maine to Miami" at night.