WHKZ

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WHKZ

Broadcast area	Warren, Ohio
Branding	AM 1440 The Word
Slogan	Cleveland's Christian Talk
First air date	early 1940's (as WRRN)
Frequency	1440 (kHz)
Format	Religious
Power	5,000 watts
Class	B
Callsign meaning	derived from WHKW
Former callsigns	WHKW (2001-2005) WFHM (2001) WHKW (2001) WRBP (1998-2001) WRRO (1981-1998) WHHH (1948-1981) WRRN (early 1940's-1948)
Owner	Salem Communications
Website	www.whkwradio.com

WHKZ is an AM radio station in Warren, Ohio, USA, operating on 1440 kHz. The station carries religious programming from the Salem Network. The bulk of WHKZ's programming is simulcast from WHKW on 1220 kHz in Cleveland, Ohio.

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 based at KRLA in Los Angeles and syndicated by Salem Communications. Some other infomercials and religious programming air separately between the two stations.

[edit] History

The station originally signed on as WRRN, the call letters being a contraction of "Warren." In 1948,[1] it was purchased by Helen Hart Hurlburt, publisher of the Tribune-Chronicle, and the call sign was changed to WHHH, to reflect her initials. Under her ownership, a construction permit was obtained for a television station, WHHH-TV on channel 67 in the early 1950s[2], but the station never made it onto the air, probably because of the vagaries of operating a UHF station at the time.

Hurlburt sold the station to Warren Broadcasting Co. in 1981, and the call letters were changed to WRRO (for "WaRRen, Ohio") on May 4, 1981. The station was subsequently purchased in February 1996 by Star Communications, Inc., headed by Art Greenberg and Phil Levine of Cleveland. The call sign was changed to WRBP on September 25, 1998.

Star Communications sold the station to Salem Communications in early 2001, and the calls were changed to WHKW on March 15, 2001. The new call letters where adapted from the calls of WHK in Cleveland which Salem had purchased five years earlier, with the second "W" either standing for Warren or for WHK's "The Word" slogan.

It operated briefly as WFHM from July 6 to August 16, 2001, when Salem parked the WFHM call letters here while operating its newly obtained 95.5 FM station in Cleveland as WHK-FM, then changed back to WHKW. When Salem Communications moved the WHKW calls to Cleveland for its station on 1220 kHz (as the WHK callsign moved back to its' original home of 1420 kHz, the call letters of the Warren station were changed to WHKZ on April 13, 2005.