WHKZ

WHKZ (1440 AM) is a radio station in Warren, Ohio, USA. 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.

In February 2008, an agreement was reached for Pittsburgh's Pentecostal Temple Church to acquire WHKZ for a reported sale price of $550,000 and was eventually approved by the FCC, but eventually fell through. The station is still currently owned and operated by Salem Communications.

History

The station originally signed on November 11, 1941 as WRRN, the call letters being a contraction of "Warren." In 1948, 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, but the station never made it onto the air, probably because of the vagaries of operating a UHF station at the time.