Pittsburgh Radio: KQV To End Nearly 100 Years Of Broadcasting

Pittsburgh's oldest all-news radio station, KQV 1410 AM, is going silent next year, ending nearly 100 years of broadcasts.

Bob Dickey Jr., the station's general manager, said 1410 on the AM dial will go off the air Jan. 1, reports TribLive.com.

“It's a sad day for broadcast and for the news business,” Dickey said Friday.

Dickey said he told the station's staff of about 20 people.

“This has always been a labor of love. The news business is a tough business,” Dickey said. “We loved doing what we were as long as we've done it.”

KQV started in 1919 and is one of only three radio stations east of the Mississippi — KQV, KDKA and KYW in Philadelphia — with call letters beginning in K. The station has been independently owned since 1982, when Dickey's father, Robert W. Dickey Sr. and Tribune-Review publisher Dick Scaife formed Calvary Inc. to buy it from Taft Broadcasting. Scaife sold the station back to Dickey and his sister, Cheryl A. Scott, after their father died in 2011.

Scott died in November. Dickey said the station wasn't the same after that.

Dickey said without Scaife's financial backing, the station would have died decades earlier.

“Mr. Scaife made this possible,” Dickey said.

Dickey said declining revenue from advertising and increasing labor costs made the station unsustainable. The station hopes to sell land in Ross Township where its transmitters sit and the license. Dickey hopes someone buys the license, revives the station and makes it another 100 years.