WHLK
 |
|
| City | Cleveland, Ohio |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area |
Greater Cleveland Northeast Ohio |
| Branding | 106.5 The Lake |
| Slogan | We Play Anything! |
| Frequency | 106.5 MHz (also on HD Radio) |
| First air date | May 4, 1960 |
| Format |
Adult hits HD2: Soft rock |
| ERP | 11,500 watts |
| HAAT | 316 meters |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 59594 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°22′45.00″N 81°43′12.00″W / 41.3791667°N 81.7200000°W |
| Callsign meaning | THe LaKe |
| Former callsigns | WABQ-FM (1960–61) WXEN (1961–77) WZZP (1977–84) WLTF (1984–97) WMVX (1997–2011) |
| Affiliations |
City Club of Cleveland iHeartRadio Total Traffic and Weather Network |
| Owner |
iHeartMedia (Citicasters Licenses, Inc.) |
| Sister stations | WAKS, WGAR-FM, WMJI, WMMS, WTAM |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | 106.5 The Lake |
WHLK (106.5 FM) – branded 106.5 The Lake – is a commercial adult hits radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio. Owned by iHeartMedia, the station serves Greater Cleveland and much of surrounding Northeast Ohio. The WHLK studios are located in the Cleveland suburb of Independence, while the station transmitter resides in nearby Parma. Besides a standard analog transmission, WHLK broadcasts over two HD Radio channels, and is available online via iHeartRadio.
The station was originally supposed to be the home of WJMO-FM before a studio/call letter/format swap took place between the owners of WJMO and WSRS (now WERE) in 1958, putting the license in the hands of Tuschman Broadcasting Company. On May 4, 1960, the new station first signed on as WABQ-FM. By May 1961, the station changed its callsign to WXEN. The new callsign stood for XENophon Zapis, a station show producer who later helped to establish WZAK as that station's owner.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, WXEN and WZAK both featured mostly nationality programming, that is, one or two hour programs devoted to music and programming for different nationalities, such as Polish, Slovenian or Hungarian, with program hosts speaking in the native language. It used the slogan "The Station of the Nations." Tuschman Broadcasting Company sold both WXEN and WABQ to Booth Broadcasting of Detroit in 1964. Booth American installed a rock format on March 13, 1977 with the branding "ZIP 106", changing the call letters to WZZP on March 21, 1977.
The station changed to WLTF on March 5, 1984, and aired an adult contemporary format as "Lite Rock 106½". Its "Lovelite" jingles were created for the station by Jim Brickman in 1987. WLTF was Cleveland's number one radio station through the late 1980s and early 1990s, with its morning program hosted by "Trapper Jack" Elliott also rated number one. Billboard magazine named WLTF the "Adult Contemporary Station of the Year" in 1991. Soon other stations such as WQAL and WDOK started competing head-to-head with similar formats and gaining market share.
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Wikipedia