WGHQ

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WGHQ
City of license	Kingston, New York
Broadcast area	Hudson Valley
Slogan	The Sound of the Valley
First air date	March, 1950
Frequency	920 kHz
Format
Power	5 kW daytime, 78 watts nighttime
Class	D
Callsign meaning	W General HeadQuarters
Owner	Pamal Broadcasting
Website	[]

WGHQ (The Sound of the Valley) is the callsign of a radio station licensed to Kingston, New York and serving the Hudson Valley as well as a part of the Capital District market. The station is owned by Pamal Broadcasting and broadcasts on 920 kHz at 5 kilowatts daytime and 78 watts nighttime, both directional, from a three-tower array located just south of Kingston.

[edit] History

WGHQ signed on in March 1950 as the second radio station licensed to Kingston (after WKNY), eventually taking the ABC affiliation for the market. In 1965, WGHQ would add an FM signal, WGHQ-FM (later the original WBPM, now WKXP) at 94.3 MHz which would simulcast the AM's programming for much of the next decade . From its inception, WGHQ aired a somewhat Kingston-centric full service middle of the road format which had a vast daytime advantage to WKNY, but unlike WKNY was a daytimer.

The first non-evolution change to take place to WGHQ was in 1978 when original owner Harry Thayer transferred ownership to the station to to his daughter Jean Maxwell and her husband Walter. Initially, the station kept its focus but rising costs and the decline of full service formats on AM led to the station taking an all music format. In 1988, WGHQ added a small amount of nighttime power but at the price of the station going mainly to satellite-fed programming, later flipping to a standards format fed in part by ABC Radio Networks.

WGHQ would remain standards for most of the 1990s at which point the Maxwells decided to cash in on the initial investment made decades earlier, selling WGHQ and WBPM to WRWD/WBWZ owner Roberts Radio in early 1999. That October, WGHQ flipped to a satellite-fed talk radio format in the wake of WEOK flipping from standards to talk. The talk format did not last long as Roberts Radio was sold to Clear Channel in 2000 and WGHQ returned back to standards (this time as Music of Your Life) under its new ownership.

In late 2004, Clear Channel began to diversify their AM holdings in the Hudson Valley, all of which had been running standards in an ad hoc network as the "Hudson Valley Nostalgia Network". Being by far the best signal in the market, WGHQ flipped to talk radio and picked up syndicated shows including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Gallagher, Laura Ingraham, and Coast to Coast AM. Ironically, the one local weekday show on the station ("Kingston Community Radio", airing 7:00-9:00 a.m.) is a show produced by an organization headed by former owner Walter Maxwell.

With the pending sale to Pamal Broadcasting, the future of WGHQ's talk format may be up in the air. Pamal may keep the talk format but make some modifications. A possible relocation to the station's original studios in Kingston (or elsewhere in that city) also exists as Pamal has hinted running WBPM and WGHQ separate from their main cluster in the market.

In June 2006, it was announced that WGHQ and sister WBPM would be acquired by Pamal Broadcasting as part of a multi-market swap between Pamal and Clear Channel.

On February 1st 2007, Pamal Broadcasting took control of WBPM and WGHQ from Clear Channel. At this time, WGHQ began simulcasting WBNR and WLNA as "The Sound of the Valley". WBPM was flipped to a classic hits format as Classic Hits 92.9.

[edit] External links

• Query the FCC's AM station database for WGHQ
• WGHQ Homepage