WNNH
| 200px | |
| City of license | Henniker, New Hampshire |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Central New Hampshire |
| Branding | 99.1 NH1 Newsradio |
| Slogan | New Hampshire's Newsradio New Hampshire In Every Way |
| Frequency | 99.1 MHz |
| First air date | October 1989 |
| Format | Talk radio |
| ERP | 2,800 watts |
| HAAT | 146 meters (479 ft) |
| Class | A |
| Facility ID | 11664 |
| Transmitter coordinates | Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. |
| Callsign meaning | W Ninety-Nine Henniker (city of license) |
| Affiliations | CBS Radio News Westwood One Salem Radio Network Bloomberg Radio |
| Owner | Binnie Media (WBIN Media Co., Inc.) |
| Sister stations | WBIN-TV, WEMJ, WFNQ, WJYY, WLNH-FM, WNHW, WYCN-CD |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | wnnh.nh1media.com |
WNNH (99.1 MHz; "New Hampshire 1 Newsradio") is an FM radio station owned by Binnie Media. WNNH is licensed to Henniker and serves Central New Hampshire. Its transmitter is on Watchtower Road in Hopkinton and its studios and offices are on Church Street in Concord. Established in 1989, the station airs a talk radio format.
The weekday morning show with Jack Heath is provided by WGIR in Manchester, New Hampshire and weekday afternoons feature Boston-based Howie Carr. The remainder of the weekday schedule is made up of nationally syndicated shows from Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Michael Savage, Lars Larson, Red Eye Radio and First Light. WNNH airs local news provided by co-owned WBIN-TV including a simulcast of the TV station's 10 p.m. newscast. National news comes from CBS Radio News. WNNH carries New England Patriots football.
History
WNNH first signed on the air in October 1989 from the Pats Peak Ski Area in Henniker, with studios on South Street in Concord. The station's original owner was Clark Smidt, who programmed several Boston FM stations in the 1970s, including WEEI-FM (103.3 FM; now WODS) and WBZ-FM (106.7 FM; now WMJX). WNNH's original format was oldies. In the early days, the station also marketed itself to the Manchester area, even though it was a rimshot signal into Manchester itself, and practically inaudible south of the city. At the outset, WNNH had a very slick sound for a small market station, complete with PAMS jingles. The station had a diverse playlist — deeper than most oldies stations.
In 1994, Smidt tried to purchase WJYY (105.5 FM) and its then-satellite station, WRCI (107.7 FM; now WTPL), from Empire Broadcasting Partners, with the idea of putting WNNH on 105.5 to reinforce its signal in Concord. Empire Broadcasting owned a group of radio stations in Upstate New York and Northern New England (including WGY in Schenectady, New York), but had overextended themselves and went bankrupt. The bankruptcy court ruled that Empire Radio Partners could not be reorganized and ordered the stations sold at auction; another company, RadioWorks, was chosen by the court as the winner of the auction.
Smidt sold WNNH to Tele-Media in 1999;[1] Tele-Media, in turn, sold WNNH, WLKZ, and WHOB (now WFNQ) to Nassau Broadcasting Partners in 2004.[2] However, even though WLKZ, which Tele-Media had acquired in 2000,[3] also broadcast an oldies format (albeit serving the nearby Lakes Region), the two stations continued to be programmed and branded separately until 2007, when Nassau consolidated the two stations into a simulcast. That December, the stations shifted to Nassau's Frank FM classic hits format as a result of an unsuccessful attempt to convert WWHK and WWHQ from classic rock to sports radio programming from WEEI.[4][5]
On April 27, 2009 it was announced that WNNH and WWHQ would be spun off into a divestiture trust and sold as part of a debt-for-equity restructuring of Nassau Broadcasting in which Goldman Sachs became 85% owner of the company. The new ownership structure ended Nassau's grandfathered status with respect to how many stations in the Concord-Lakes Region market it could own. A sale of the two stations to Great Eastern Radio was announced on September 22, 2009.[6] In the interim, Nassau discontinued 99 and 104.9 Frank FM on November 4, and switched WNNH to a simulcast of WJYY for several weeks before converting it to a loop of promotions for other Nassau stations in the Concord-Lakes Region market.[7] The station went silent on March 1, 2010 due to power failure[8] and returned to the air in March 2011 as a simulcast of the Maine-based WBACH network of classical music stations.
WNNH, along with 16 other Nassau stations in northern New England, was purchased at bankruptcy auction by WBIN Media Company, a company controlled by Bill Binnie, on May 22, 2012. Binnie already owns WBIN-TV in Derry and WYCN-CD in Nashua.[9][10] The deal was completed on November 30, 2012;[11] a few weeks earlier, on November 9, WNNH dropped the simulcast of WBACH and returned to the classic hits format and Frank FM branding dropped three years earlier.
On August 31, 2015, WNNH switched to "99.1 NH1 News" with local news and syndicated talk shows.[12][13]
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Talk Radio/Media Industry News New Hampshire Gets New FM N/T Station
- ↑ WNNH To Become New Hampshire's Newsradio
