WVOC (560AM) – brandedNews Radio 103.5 & 560 WVOC – is acommercialnews/talkradio station licensed to serveColumbia, South Carolina. Owned byiHeartMedia, Inc., the station covers theColumbia metropolitan area. The WVOC studios and transmitter are located in Columbia. In addition to a standardanalog transmission, WVOC is simulcast overFMtranslator W278CY (103.5 FM),^[2] and is available online viaiHeartRadio.

WVOC's power is 5,000watts around the clock from a three-tower facility west of Columbia. By day it uses anon-directional signal from a single tower. Its daytime signal provides at least secondary coverage as far north as theCharlotte suburbs, as far west asSpartanburg andGreenwood, and as far south as theAugusta andCharleston suburbs. At night, power is fed to all three towers in adirectional pattern to protect other stations on560 AM. This concentrates WVOC's signal in the central part of the state.

The station signed on as WIS on July 10, 1930.^[3] The call letters were derived from South Carolina's nickname "Wonderful Iodine State"; before the modern-day manufacturing ofiodized salt, a high level ofiodine in the state's soil gave the state's residents "a low incidence ofgoiters."^[4] WIS was the last broadcast station in the United States to have been issued a previously unused call sign with three letters; this assignment took place on January 23, 1930.^[5] Soon after signing on, WIS was bought by Liberty Life Insurance Company of Columbia, becoming one of many early radio stations owned by insurance companies in the South.

On October 10, 1931, WIS changed its network affiliation fromCBS to theNBC Blue Network.^[6] In December 1940, the affiliation was switched to theNBC Red Network.^[7]

On November 14, 1949, a two-story studio on Bull Street was completed to house both the radio station and a planned television station. Construction ofWIS-TV was authorized January 29, 1953, and the station signed on the air on November 7, 1953.^[8] The two stations operated under a newly formed Liberty Insurance subsidiary, the Broadcasting Company of the South. After acquiring several other stations across the country, it changed its name to Cosmos Broadcasting Corporation, with WIS-AM-TV as the flagship stations.

Cosmos pulled out of radio in 1986, and the new owners adopted the call sign WVOC on December 31. The TV station kept the WIS-TV call letters. The radio station had to change its call sign due to a since-repealed FCC rule that barred stations with different ownership from sharing the same call sign. (WVOC had been the call letters of the student radio station atCanisius College inBuffalo, New York, from 1964 to 1976.^[9]) The new owners dropped the 56-year affiliation with NBC in favor ofCBS Radio News.

WVOC began atalk radio format with mostly syndicated shows, includingRush Limbaugh,Michael Savage,Glenn Beck,Matt Drudge,Kim Komando andCoast to Coast AM. The station also featured a statewide-syndicated sports talk show in evenings.

In 2001,Clear Channel Communications bought the station. WVOC switched its network affiliation toABC Radio News after signing a deal to run ABC Radio commentatorPaul Harvey. In 2005, as part of a corporate-wide change, the station changed toFox News Radio.

From 1954 until 2002, WIS/WVOC was the flagship for theUniversity of South Carolinacollege football andbasketball, and touted itself as the "Home of theGamecocks." However, on June 27, 2002, Host Communications, which handled game broadcasts for the university, decided to leave WVOC in favor of rivalCitadel Broadcasting stations. The decision put Gamecock athletics on Citadel's FM signals, which had wider coverage than WVOC.

WVOC was the flagship radio station of the May 15, 2007, broadcast of the Fox News Republican Presidential Debate which took place in Columbia.

On October 26, 2011, WVOC began simulcasting on its sister stationWXBT, which had previously broadcast anurban contemporary format. That November, WXBT changed its call sign to WVOC-FM. On January 3, 2012, as part of a three-way format swap, thesports radio programming that was onWCOS (1400 AM) was moved to WVOC, and the call sign was changed to WXBT. As part of the swap, WXBT adopted the moniker "SportsRadio 560 The Team."

In 2013, WXBT became an affiliate ofFox Sports Radio after it originally carriedESPN Radio programming.

WXBT fired most of its local hosts in October 2014 owing to poor ratings.^[10] That November 6, WXBT switched to a simulcast of WVOC-FM, while its former sports programming moved back to WCOS.^[11]

The simulcast ended on December 10, when the talk programming moved exclusively to AM 560, which changed its call letters back to WVOC on December 15. WXBT also returned to its previousurban contemporary format; in effect, this move reversed the 2011 format swap. In November 2019, WVOC added an FM translator, W278CY at 103.5 MHz.

WVOC personalities Gary David and Christopher Thompson host the morning drive program;The Glenn Beck Program,The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show,The Sean Hannity Show, air in late mornings, middays, and afternoons, all of which are fromPremiere Networks.The Mark Levin Show (viaWestwood One), andClyde Lewis (via Premiere) air in the evening hours, whileCoast to Coast AM (via Premiere) andThis Morning, America's First News with Gordon Deal (viaCompass Media Networks) air in the overnight hours.

Weekends hosts includeKim Komando,Rudy Maxa,Ron Wilson,Gary Sullivan,Joe Pags,Art Bell andBill Cunningham.

• A Sunday in Columbia, S.C.
• Facility details for Facility ID 11902 (WVOC) in theFCC Licensing and Management System
• WVOC inNielsen Audio's AM station database
• Facility details for Facility ID 202554 (W278CY) in theFCC Licensing and Management System
• W278CY at FCCdata.org

• Radio stations in South Carolina
• News and talk radio stations in the United States
• Radio stations established in 1930
• 1930 establishments in South Carolina
• IHeartMedia radio stations

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