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When The Oregonian Publishing Company, publisher of the daily Oregonian newspaper, decided to produce a licensed radio station, it purchased a 50-watt experimental transmitter from the Portland office of the Shipowners Radio Service. The U.S. Department of Commerce licensed the station on March 21, 1922, and assigned it the call-letters KGW. Later that month, the radio equipment was installed and tested, allowing KGW to make its initial broadcast on March 25, 1922.
KGW-AM went on the air from a studio on the 11th floor of The Oregonian building tower on Southwest Sixth Avenue and Alder Street, in downtown Portland. The transmitter was located on the 13th floor. The antenna consisted of a 70-foot, four-wire inverted "L"-type flattop, suspended between a 60-foot mast on top of the building and a 95-foot tower on the nearby Northwestern Bank building.
KGW’s early announcers and writers were usually former newspaper employees, and the first engineers and technicians came from the ranks of former maritime wireless radio operators. Due in part to the staff’s wireless radio experience, an installed receiving set allowed the station to shut down intermittently upon receiving distress signals from ships at sea.
Initially, KGW aired a limited number of programs only three hours a day. Later, the station instituted a 24-hour-a-day broadcasting format. Service programs were developed, including public health lectures, informative talks, children’s story hours, lectures on foreign trade, and church services on Sundays.
 KGW also received national recognition for its production of a live studio program, the Hoot Owls, officially known as "The Order of Hoot Owls Roosting in the Oregonian Tower." Their slogan soon became "Keep Growing Wiser," whose initial letters represented the KGW call letters.
One of the performers on the Hoot Owls program, Mel Blanc, achieved fame as the author of cartoon characterization in later years. Blanc, who received his high school education in Portland, joined the program in 1927. Nicknamed "the Grand Snicker" on the Hoot Owls, Blanc became well known for his comedy, as well as his skills as a storyteller, ad-libber, musician, vocalist, and, later, orchestra pit conductor. Blanc left KGW in 1933 to perform on KEX-AM radio in the popular "Cobwebs and Nuts" program, before moving to Hollywood in 1935. While working on animated cartoons at Warner Brothers studios in Southern California, he became known as the "man of a thousand voices." During his early years in Portland radio, Blanc laid the foundation for many of his later cartoon voices and comedy routines.
 In 1924, KGW expanded its program venue to include sports, political debates, and occasional newsworthy events, such as the Republican and Democratic national conventions.
As an early radio station experiencing tremendous popularity, KGW implemented many innovative new broadcasting ideas. In 1925, for example, on-air advertising became a source of KGW’s operating revenue, with the station producing the first singing commercial in the U.S. for Sears, Roebuck and Company in the late 1920s.
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