WHBC (AM)

WHBC is the oldest radio station in Canton. The license for the station was granted on February 13, 1925 to Father Edward P. Graham and the St. John Catholic Church . WHBC began broadcasting on March 9, 1925 at 1180 kHz with 100 watts. It was the first Catholic radio station on the air in the U.S., as WLWL in New York was not licensed until August 1925 . By the middle of 1927 the station had moved to 1270 kHz. Broadcasting had moved to 1200 kHz by the middle of 1930.

In 1936 the station was sold to secular interests, when it was purchased by Brush-Moore Newspapers, then owners of Canton's newspaper, The Repository. The station was sold in 1939 to a business group consisting of the Vodrey family of East Liverpool and the Boyd family of Portsmouth. The families organized ownership of the station under the name of the Ohio Broadcasting Company. They obtained approval to increase power to 250 watts daytime, while maintaining 100 watts at night. The station had no network affiliation until 1940 or 1941 when it became a Mutual affiliate. It became an ABC affiliate later in the 1940s . WHBC would remain with ABC Radio until June 22, 2009, when it switched to Fox News Radio.

On March 29, 1941, when most stations in the U.S. changed frequencies due to the NARBA, WHBC moved from 1200 to 1230 kHz. It moved to its present frequency of 1480 kHz on June 4, 1944, when WGAR AM in Cleveland moved from 1480 to 1220. The station obtained an FM license in 1948 and established WHBC-FM on 94.1 MHz which still operates using those call letters.

In September 1947, WHBC's power increased from 1 kW to 5 kW. At that time, it was affiliated with both the ABC and Mutual networks.[2]

On November 22, 1963, WHBC's afternoon talk show "Bee Line" was interrupted at 1:41pm for a bulletin from ABC news concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The program was preserved on audio tape and can be found on the internet.

On September 26, 1967, the ownership was reorganized as WHBC, Inc., which changed its name to Beaverkettle Company on September 13, 1972. The Vodreys purchased WFIR in Roanoke, Virginia in 1969; they sold the station eight years later. In June 2000, the family-owned Beaverkettle Company sold WHBC and WHBC-FM to NextMedia for more than 42 million dollars.[3] ending 61 years of Vodrey family ownership of the stations.

For many years, WHBC was the only full-time AM station in Canton, as the stations on 900, 1060, and 1520 kHz were all daytimers, as also were 990 in Massillon and 1310 in Alliance (all but 1060 and 1520 were later granted a modest night power under changes in the FCC rules). As such, WHBC enjoyed enviable dominance in the Canton radio market, although stations from Akron and Cleveland could also be heard.

On March 26, 2007, WHBC ended its long-running Full Service format in favor of a full-time news/talk format, eliminating its remaining oldies-formatted dayparts. The station also broadcasts a show resurrected, a staple from the '60s and '70s called Tradio, where listeners can call in and sell items for sale.

NextMedia would usher in a shift to News Talk Radio on the AM side, while confusion was the primary FM Format, which lurched between Hot AC and CHR Based AC, under a series of Program Directors until the Digity sale in 2014.

The station is also an affiliate for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Cleveland Browns and the Cleveland Indians as well as the Ohio State Sports Network.[4]

WHBC was one of the first, if not the first, radio station to stream live play-by-play coverage of the Massillon Tigers and Canton McKinley high school football game over the Internet during the 1997 football season. People from all parts of the United States and parts of Europe were able to listen to the game live via the Internet.[5]

NextMedia sold WHBC and their 32 other radio stations to Digity, LLC for $85 million; the transaction was consummated on February 10, 2014.

In November 2014, 20-year veteran sports host Sam Bourquin ended his relationship with the station, after an announcement on WHBC.com and on WHBC's Facebook.com page, after the station attempted to move Bourquin to a slot in WHBC's morning show, where former Sports Director Jim Johnson had spent the bulk of his career before he retired.

Effective February 25, 2016, Digity and its 124 radio stations were acquired by Alpha Media for $264 million.

As of 2015, the majority of WHBC's schedule has shifted to sports oriented programming, though on weekdays there is still general news/talk programming, including a local morning drive show hosted by longtime WHBC personality Pam Cook. Gary Rivers shifted to a midday talk show when Ron Ponder, who had been the midday host since the shift to full-time news talk, was jettisoned in the first quarter of 2017.

Longtime NE Ohio sportscaster Kenny Roda hosts the afternoon drive sports talk show. National shows heard on WHBC include those hosted by Rich Eisen (Fox Sports Radio) and Jim Bohannon (Westwood One), as well as Yahoo Sports Radio airing weekday evenings and most of the day on weekends.[1]

• Carol Adams - commentator/home economist (1956–57)[6]

1480 Morning Shows: 'The Morning Team of Fred Chenevey and Pam Cook' (?-March 2011) 'Cook & Fox with Pam Cook and Matt Fox' (March 2011-September 4, 2012) 'Canton's Morning News with Pam Cook and Todd Porter' (September 5, 2012-February 2013) 'Canton's Morning News with Pam Cook' (February–December 2013) 'Canton's Morning News with Pam Cook and Gary Rivers' (December 2013 to February 2017)

• History of St. John Church

• WHBC in the FCC's AM station database
• WHBC on Radio-Locator
• WHBC in Nielsen Audio's AM station database

• Aerial photo of WHBC's daytime transmitter from Google Local
• Aerial photo of WHBC's nighttime transmitter from Google Local