WHKW

Encyclopedia : W : WH : WHK : WHKW

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WHKW is an AM radio station in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, operating on 1220 kHz. The station carries religious programming from the Salem Network. The bulk of WHKW's programming is simulcast on WHKZ on 1440 kHz in Warren, Ohio. WHKW is also the Cleveland affiliate for Dave Ramsey's syndicated afternoon talk show.

The 1220 frequency in Cleveland was the home to AM radio station WGAR for 50 years. It then served as the home of WKNR before the great frequency swap of 2001.

History

WGAR

The history of the current WHKW began with AM station WDBK, which signed on the air on May 15, 1924 with 250 watts of power. The station was owned by Stanley Broz in the name of the M.F. Broz Furniture, Hardware and Radio Co., and was located at 13918 Union Avenue in Cleveland. The station moved to Boltan Square Hotel on Carnegie Avenue in 1925, and was using the slogan, "Broadcasting from Cleveland." In September 1927, Broz sold the station to William F. Jones, and WDBK was taken off the air. The station relocated to the Akron Beacon Journal building in Akron, and resumed broadcast operations in November 1927 as WFJC, the new call letters being derived from the owner's initials. Sam Townshend was listed as co-owner, and the first two announcers were Cyril Jones and Jerry McKiernam.

Jones sold the station to George A. Richards of Detroit in September 1930, and Richards moved the station back to Cleveland. He obtained a new callsign based on his initials, and WGAR signed on the air on December 15, 1930. WGAR was part of the Goodwill Station group that included WJR and KMPC, both also owned by Richards.

In 1937 WGAR became Cleveland's CBS affiliate. On October 30, 1938 it broadcast Mercury Theater's "War of the Worlds," and it was left to a young staff announcer named Jack Paar to go on the air and calm Cleveland listeners by telling them that the program was only a dramatization. WGAR produced some programs for the CBS network, one of the notable ones being Wings Over Jordan, a popular Sunday morning CBS show that had the widest audience of any African-American broadcast.

Originally at 1480 kHz, it switched to 1450 kHz on March 29, 1941 during the NARBA frequency shift, and then to 1220 kHz on June 4, 1944. On July 4, 1947, it increased its power from 5,000 to 50,000 watts during daytime hours. WGAR was the flagship station for Cleveland Browns broadcasts 1946–1949, 1954 and 1956–1961. Richards died in May 1951, and WGAR was purchased in 1953 by People's Broadcasting Corp., a company that had been founded seven years earlier by the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation to serve rural communities. People's Broadcasting became Nationwide Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Nationwide Insurance in 1954. (WJR was sold to Storer Broadcasting; KMPC was purchased by Gene Autry.)

With the demise of network radio in the 1950s, WGAR tried various music formats, settling into an adult contemporary format in the 1960s helmed by Tom Armstrong in the morning slot for much of this period. When WGAR hired Bill Clock in 1969, it became the first general station in Cleveland to employ a black disc jockey. Don Imus did a stint at WGAR as a morning drive personality from 1970 to 1971 before moving on to WNBC in New York. (He returned to Cleveland in 1979 to do afternoons on WHK.) Imus was replaced in 1971 by John Lanigan who had a very successful run as the morning man until he left for WMJI in 1985.

The station abandoned its adult contemporary format for a country music format on July 15, 1984. It donated its entire collection of jazz recordings to WCPN, the new public radio outlet that was going on the air the following September. WGAR soon simulcast the country music format with it's FM sister station, WGAR 99.5-FM, starting in 1986. By 1990, WGAR was sold off to Douglas Broadcasting, and became talk station WKNR. WGAR-FM assumed the WGAR identity, and does to this day.

WKNR

The call letters WKNR were introduced to Cleveland on July 13, 1990 [link], when WGAR stopped using the call letters for its AM outlet at 1220 kHz, and used the call letters exclusively to identify its FM outlet at 99.5 Mhz. The station adopted a sports talk format, and lured the Cleveland Indians broadcasts away from long-time flagship WWWE. For several years in the mid 1990s, WKNR was home to Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Browns, and Ohio State football and basketball broadcasts. At this time, the station was owned by Cablevision Systems Corp.

On August 19, 1997, Jacor announced the purchase of WKNR from Cablevision Systems Corp. [7]. Jacor, which also owned WTAM, had the Cleveland Indians broadcasts moved back to WTAM beginning with the 1998 season and the Cleveland Browns rights transferred to WMJI and WTAM for the 1999 season, leaving significant holes in WKNR's programming.

Jacor then swapped WKNR with Capstar Broadcasting’s WTAE in Pittsburgh in 1998 as part of the Justice Department settlement when Jacor purchased Nationwide Communications - ironically, the same people who sold WGAR (AM) in 1990 and still owned WGAR-FM [8]. On July 13, 1999, Chancellor Media merged with Capstar Broadcasting to form AMFM Inc., at that time the nation's largest radio station owner with 465 stations. AMFM sold WKNR to Salem Communications on July 20, 2000 as part of a required divestiture when AMFM merged with Clear Channel Communications [link].

In spite of several management and lineup changes, WKNR continues at the 850 kHz location today with the same type of programming that it has had for the last decade.

WHK

On July 3, 2001, a seven-way frequency swap occurred involving four stations in Cleveland. Salem Communications moved the WHK calls and religious format from 1420-AM to 1220-AM, the WKNR calls and sports talk format were moved from 1220-AM to 850-AM, and Radio Seaway took over the 1420-AM frequency from Salem and it became WCLV - with a standards format displaced from the 850-AM frequency.

Seaway's WCLV-FM moved from 95.5-FM to 104.9-FM, Clear Channel's WAKS moved from 104.9-FM in Lorain to 96.5-FM in Akron, Clear Channel's WKDD moved from 96.5-FM in Akron to 98.1-FM in Canton, and Salem's WHK-FM moved from 98.1-FM in Canton to 95.5-FM in Cleveland and became WFHM.

Shortly after WHK's religious programming moved to the 1220-AM signal, a simulcast of WHK's programming started on WHKW 1440-AM in Warren. The 1440 kHz facility dates back to the 1940's, and previously was the home to WRRN (194?-?), WHHH (? - 1981) , WRRO (1981 - 1998) and WRBP (1998 - 2001). 1440-AM had been dark for a month prior to becoming WHKW, and legally couched the WFHM call sign until the 95.5 MHz facility - which was acquired by Salem and took a Contemporary Christian format - could assume those call letters.

WHKW

The calls on 1220-AM changed again on April 13, 2005, to WHKW after Salem reacquired the 1420 kHz facility and placed the WHK calls on its' original frequency. Accordingly, the call letters of 1440-AM in Warren changed to WHKZ.

WHKZ simulcasts WHKW throughout much of the broadcast day, but does break away in the late evenings to air Warren native Hugh Hewitt's talk show, which is syndicated by Salem Communications. Some other infomercials and religious programming air separately between the two stations.

External links

• [Query the FCC's AM station database for WHKW]
• [Query the FCC's AM station database for WHKZ]

 

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