The station was put on the air by Chester W. Keen, owner of Main Auto Supply, and studios were located upstairs in the company building.

"[14] By choosing WOWO for easy pronunciation as a two-syllable word, in the station had a call sign that exhibited more brevity than even three-letter versions.

Despite this, announcers and disk jockeys on WOWO were originally prohibited from calling the station "Wo-Wo" on the air until the late 1960s, when a contest was introduced to identify songs in which the "woe" sound appeared.

Among the regular performers on Hoosier Hop in 1946 were the country-western group The Down Homers, which at the time included future rock and roll pioneer Bill Haley as a member.

WOWO joined original Westinghouse outlets KDKA in Pittsburgh, KYW in Philadelphia, WBZ in Boston and WBZA in Springfield, Massachusetts.

On March 29, 1941, Westinghouse completed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensing of WOWO's famous clear-channel signal on AM 1190, making it a Class I-B station, operating around the clock at 50,000 watts.

During and after World War II, these clear-channel broadcasts made WOWO a popular radio superstation of sorts throughout the Eastern United States.

When the station relocated to the Central Building, the old fire escape was cut into small pieces, encapsulated in Lucite and distributed as a promotional paper weight.

When recorded music became the norm for the station, WOWO featured a live show on Saturdays called "Little Red Barn" with Nancy Lee and the Hilltoppers.

From sunset to sunrise, WOWO's three tower in-line directional antenna was configured to protect the other Class I-B stations in the U.S., KEX in Portland, Oregon.

Initially, the leading station in Detroit (WJR), Chicago (WLS), and Cincinnati (WLW) all competed for farmer listeners with agricultural reports.

Sievers, who was on the station for over 50 years (until 1987) was a major Fort Wayne celebrity and was inducted into National Radio Hall of Fame in 2017.

[25] Also heard was Jay Gould, News Director Dugan Fry, meteorologist Earl Finckle, the "In a Little Red Barn (on a farm down in Indiana)" de facto theme song of WOWO, the Penny Pitch charity fund raisers, sports director Bob Chase's Komet Hockey broadcasts, the weather reports from WOWO's personnel on its studio's "world-famous fire escape," and husband-wife hosts of The Little Red Barn Show, music director Sam DeVincent and wife Nancy of "Nancy Lee and the Hilltoppers", all were listened to by people from the Great Lakes to the United States' East Coast and Eastern Canada.

WOWO's nighttime skywave service required WLIB in New York City, which also broadcasts at 1190 kHz, to operate during daylight hours only with 10,000 watts of power permitted by FCC.

This move permitted WLIB to broadcast around the clock, no longer needing to sign off to protect WOWO's nighttime clear-channel signal.

This reduced WOWO's potential audience to a much smaller local region in northern Indiana, northwestern Ohio, and south-central Michigan.

However, AT&T reported that the United States Air Force accidentally used the wrong tape for the test, and initiated an Emergency Action Notification, normally issued by the Office of Civil Defense or the President.

This prompted all stations in the Fort Wayne, Indiana, area[citation needed] by order of the FCC to operate under emergency procedures and feed the broadcast from WOWO through their radios.

[26] The WOWO recording is used in the song "Cold Call" by American progressive rock band OSI on their release Fire Make Thunder.

[non-primary source needed] WOWO is currently located at the Federated Media broadcast complex on Maples Road on Fort Wayne's south side; the facility also serves as the transmitter site for co-owned WKJG.

[27] Pat Miller, who had broadcast on Saturday mornings starting in April 2001, moved his program to the weekday afternoon drive time spot in May 2010.

[29] In September 2014, WOWO won a Marconi Award as the Medium Market Station of the Year by the National Association of Broadcasters.

[30] In October 2022, WOWO won for the second time a Marconi Radio Award for Medium Market Station of the Year by the National Association of Broadcasters.