Rock format The station
signed on the air on November 16, 1988. It was owned by Latchkey Broadcasting and aired an adult
album-oriented rock format under the
call sign WMRQ. The station was founded by Dirk Nadon and his stepfather Bill Forbes. In a 2018 interview with
The Laconia Daily Sun, Nadon recalled that, "At the time, it was the only
rock station north of
Manchester," with that city's
WGIR-FM being the nearest rock station and most Lakes Region stations programming
adult contemporary formats.
Adult contemporary In May 1990, WMRQ flipped to an adult contemporary format as "Sunny 101.5". It changed its call sign to WWSS on May 1. The death of Bill Forbes and the economic impact of a banking crisis eventually forced Nadon to sell the station. In 1994, Latchkey sold the station to WLNH's owner, Sconnix Broadcasting, for $80,000. Ahead of the sale, WWSS temporarily went
silent in January 1994. WWSS had been slated to be acquired by Gary W. Hammond in a $185,000 deal a year earlier; Hammond ultimately purchased WLNH (AM) from Sconnix.
Classic rock On February 28, 1994, the station changed its call sign to WBHG. Sconnix sold its Lakes Region stations — WBHG, WLNH-FM, and
WEMJ (1490 AM) — to
Nassau Broadcasting Partners for $5 million in 2004. The three stations were the last to be held by Sconnix. On February 4, 2005, Nassau relaunched the station as WWHQ. which soon became WWHK. In March 2008, WWHQ shifted from classic rock to a more mainstream rock format. WWHQ's simulcast with WWHK ended on August 22, 2008, after Nassau Broadcasting Partners was forced by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to end its joint sales agreement with WWHK owner Capitol Broadcasting. On April 27, 2009, it was announced that WWHQ and
WNNH (99.1 FM) in
Henniker 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. On November 4, 2009, WWHQ began
stunting while its "Hawk"-branded classic rock format moved to
WLKZ (104.9 FM) in
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. WWHQ went silent on March 1, 2010, due to power failure. With the loss of electricity, management did not intend to return the station to the air until the completion of the transfer of ownership. However in February 2011, WWHQ resumed broadcasting as a simulcast of Nassau's
WBACH network of
classical music stations in Maine. WWHQ and 29 other Nassau stations in
Northern New England were purchased at bankruptcy auction by Carlisle Capital Corporation, a company controlled by
Bill Binnie (owner of
WBIN-TV in
Derry and
WYCN-LP in
Nashua), on May 22, 2012. The station, and 12 of the other stations, was then acquired by Vertical Capital Partners, controlled by Jeff Shapiro. The sale of WWHQ and the other 12 stations was consummated on November 30, 2012, at a purchase price of $4.4 million. After a brief silent period, the station returned to the air with a simulcast of new sister station
WTPL (107.7 FM).
Sports radio On December 24, 2012, the station changed its call sign to WZEI. As WWHQ, the station had previously planned to join the network in January 2008, but the deal between Nassau and
Entercom ended up collapsing. The Vertical Capital Partners stations were transferred to Shapiro's existing Great Eastern Radio group on January 1, 2013. Effective August 1, 2017, Great Eastern Radio sold WZEI, WLKZ, and WTPL to Dirk Nadon's Lakes Media, LLC for $2.6 million. Nadon had long sought to reacquire the station. In the interim, for a time he was program director of Boston-area FM station 93.7 WCGY, a forerunner to WEEI-FM. ==References==