WLOK

The Sterick Building housed the original studios of WHHM and the WHHM-FM transmitter.

On August 14, 1945, Herbert Herff applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build a new radio station to broadcast with 250 watts on 1340 kHz in Memphis.[2] It was the second time Herff, a local auto dealer, had filed for a radio station that year; in January, he applied for an FM station at 45.3 MHz.[3] The FM station was approved in November 1945,[4] and the FCC approved the AM station permit on February 13, 1946.[2] Construction immediately began on facilities to house the AM and FM stations in the Sterick Building,[5] which would also be the location of the FM transmitter; the AM station would broadcast its signal from a site at Somerville and Ryder streets.[6]

WHHM, the fifth radio station in Memphis, formally debuted July 29, 1946, with a two-hour-long opening program.[7] (The call letters either represented the car dealership, Herbert Herff Motors,[8] or the city, Herbert Herff/Memphis.[9]) The Sterick Building facilities contained two studios, one of them 20 by 32 feet, as well as offices and a newsroom.[10]

Herff owned the station for 14 months before selling the AM and the still-unbuilt FM to Mid-South Broadcasting Company, headed by Prentis Furlow, owner of KTBS in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1947 for $300,000.[11] The AM facility was moved to 46 Neely Street in 1949,[2] and the FM station on 106.9 MHz was on test by the start of 1950, being briefly used in an emergency to feed WMCF during an ice storm in the first week of January.[12] The transmitter used had previously belonged to WMCF.[13] The FM briefly attempted separate programming in 1951 before being turned off on July 1 due to a "lack of enthusiasm" for the FM programming and its financial failure.[14][15]

After four years of independent operation, WHHM joined the Liberty Broadcasting System in 1950.[16] The station had several notable DJs at this time, including big band vocalist Kenny Sargent[17] and Ron Lundy, who got his first on-air work when the normal DJ failed to show for his shift and later went on to work at WABC in New York.[18] It was one of the first local stations to focus on popular DJs and personalities, though in the mid-1950s increased competition began to dim the success the station enjoyed with this formula.[19] WHHM moved to studios on Madison Avenue in 1957, vacating the Sterick Building studios, which were leased to Southern Bell.[20]

WHHM was sold by Mid-South Broadcasting to Cy Blumenthal of Arlington, Virginia, in 1958.[19] Blumenthal's chain of stations all aired country music formats, but Memphis presented a programming puzzle. The radio stations in town already served a wide variety of market segments, and KWEM (990 AM) covered the country format.[21] A year later, Blumenthal sold WHHM to Thomas W. Shipp, a Jax Beer distributor with no other radio holdings.[22] Shipp was able to rebound the station's ratings somewhat, though he also was confronted with a task of reconstruction. The Russwood Park fire, a five-alarm blaze in April 1960, destroyed the baseball stadium as well as the nearby WHHM studios and a bank branch, causing an estimated $1 million in damage.[23] The fire nearly trapped the on-air announcer and his guest, who fled the burning station after black smoke entered the studio.[24] Broadcasting shifted to the station's transmitter site, which had moved back to the Somerville Street site in 1954,[2] before new studios opened in July in the Holiday Towers building.[25] A dispute over covered losses escalated into litigation when Shipp sued the Agricultural Insurance Company, based in Watertown, New York, in a case that centered on the value of the radio station's lost record library and jingles.[26] In April 1962, a federal jury awarded Shipp more than $74,000 in the case.[27]

Shipp sold WHHM in August 1960 to Bill Grumbles, doing business as Mercury Broadcasting. Grumbles formerly had been a vice president of RKO Teleradio, owner in Memphis of WHBQ-AM-FM-TV, before cutting ties and searching for a station to own himself.[28] Upon taking over in November, Grumbles replaced all the disc jockeys with a new airstaff, consisting mostly of former Memphians returning from other cities; he also changed the operation so that all music was played from cartridges instead of records.[29] The station also increased daytime power to 1,000 watts in November 1962.[2]

Grumbles's ownership, though, was not a financially sound one, and a battle over control of station ownership escalated on December 28, 1962. That morning, the station went off the air, all 12 employees were fired, and armed guards were stationed at the studios; the afternoon Memphis Press-Scimitar's front page read "WHHM Off The Air, Staff Fired".[30] The move came after Mercury Broadcasting had filed to sell the station back to Shipp in exchange for the cancellation of more than $140,000 in debt. However, two Connecticut men, Victor Muscat and Joseph P. Trantino, claimed to have bought a minority stake in the station from another Mercury shareholder and objected to the transaction.[30] Their successful efforts to halt the sale, however, soon took on a new dimension when it was revealed in early February that federal investigators were looking into two other Shipp businesses on mail fraud charges and that Shipp's whereabouts were unknown.[31][32]

On March 13, WHHM filed for bankruptcy; the filing listed $94,000 in assets against $511,000 in liabilities and attached Shipp to an address in Sherman Oaks, California.[33] A secretary testified that Shipp kept a second WHHM bank account even after selling the station and commingled personal and business funds; she noted that most of Shipp's capital investment came from a lease-back arrangement with a New York company for the station's equipment.[34] After returning and testifying in his own case, Shipp was personally declared bankrupt in April after another creditor from another business filed a petition for involuntary bankruptcy; the judge in that case noted Shipp's "effort to defraud" his creditors.[35] The $146,000 owed Shipp by WHHM made Shipp WHHM's largest creditor and also was Shipp's largest asset against more than $320,000 of debts.[36]

Meanwhile, Marvin C. Goff, trustee in bankruptcy, was charged with finding a buyer for the radio station, reporting in June that two experienced broadcasters were "very strong prospects" to purchase the outlet.[37] The lead offer came from the OK Group, which already had a Memphis radio station on the air: WLOK (1480 AM), the city's second Black-oriented station; it had been on the air with those call letters and under OK's ownership since 1956, having taken on that format two years prior.[38][39] The $135,000 deal, plus $15,000 from the state of Tennessee for the condemnation of the transmitter site in order to build today's Interstate 240, would give WHHM's creditors 33 cents of every dollar owed them. Meanwhile, WLOK would move its programming from 1480 to 1340 kHz, build a new transmitter facility to take advantage of the nighttime broadcasting authorization on 1340 kHz (though 1480 kHz was authorized for 5,000 watts during daylight hours, more than 1340), and sell the 1480 kHz license.[40] With Goff explaining that the WHHM license had been a "dog" to sell, the deal was approved by a federal bankruptcy referee on July 16.[41]

The WLOK studios at 363 S. Second Street predate WLOK's 1964 move to 1340 kHz.

On December 31, 1963, the FCC granted an application to transfer the license and to relocate the transmitter to the existing WLOK site at 1386 South McLemore Avenue.[2] As part of the sale, the 1480 facility was sold to Century Broadcasting of Fort Worth, Texas.[42] On April 11, 1964, WLOK and its programming moved from 1480 to 1340 kHz, with the 1480 frequency becoming a separate station as WMQM; WLOK programmed the new frequency from its existing Second Street studios.[43] The studios were just blocks from the Lorraine Motel, and when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on April 4, 1968, death threats were made on Tom Watson, the station's only White employee, who had to be escorted out of the building.[44]

In November 1968, the OK Group sold three stations—KYOK in Houston, WBOK in New Orleans, and WLOK—to Starr Broadcasting Group of Omaha, Nebraska, in a multimillion-dollar transaction.[45] The sale, consummated the next year, did not affect the station's format, but Starr did promise to add employees.[46] One of the major stakeholders of Starr, an entirely White-owned company, was conservative political commentator and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. However, WLOK frequently ran news editorials that ran in direct opposition to Buckley's views. When this was pointed out in an early July 1971 article in The New Yorker magazine, two White employees were fired and a third transferred to New Orleans. The new general manager, Billy T. Lathem, was viewed by the 11 Black employees on staff as an "Uncle Tom who made promises but didn't carry them through". As a result, they walked out and were fired on July 21, demanding the firing of the new general manager, a pay raise, and an expanded staff with more full-time employees. Members of the Black Panther Party joined a picket line and condemned what they saw as "racist control of our people's information".[47] By December, Harvey Lynch, who was Black, had replaced Lathem as WLOK's general manager.[48]

In its final years, WLOK launched one of its longest-running traditions when it organized the first "Stone Soul Picnic", a concert series and family gathering that in its first year had higher turnout than anticipated.[49] Now held at Tom Lee Park, the annual event is still organized by the station.[50]

Tennessee Historical Commission plaque at the WLOK studios

In late 1976, Starr Broadcasting, citing an interest in bigger markets and a shift in "other directions", sold WLOK to Art Gilliam for $725,000.[51] The acquisition closed in January 1977,[52] marking a milestone in Memphis radio. Gilliam was the first Black reporter on Memphis television at WMC-TV in October 1968, and WLOK became the first Black-owned radio station in the city.[53] He had pursued the station since 1975, initially backing off when Starr set a $1 million purchase price, but it eventually opted to sell under pressure to reduce its debt.[54]

Adding jazz to its format[52] and putting Operation PUSH back on its air after it was taken off under Starr ownership due to complaints and threats of a boycott,[55][56] the retooled WLOK made an immediate ratings impression against its longtime competitor, WDIA,[57] settling in as a consistent second-place to WDIA.[58] Over the years, what had been a more teen-oriented station shifted its focus to adults,[53] adopting a gospel format in 1985 in order to stave off competition from FM stations adopting the same format.[59][60] Gilliam Communications made several other expansions, attempting to win the rights to channel 13 in Memphis when RKO General was to be replaced as owner of WHBQ-TV and running station WERD in Jacksonville, Florida, for four years before selling it at a loss.[61] In 1999, it acquired WHGM in Savannah, Georgia.[55] WLOK was also recognized in the 1990s and early 2000s as one of the leading gospel stations in the United States, including by Religion & Media Monthly magazine and the National Black Programmers Coalition.[55] Over the years, WLOK has added more talk programs to its schedule; it also started a Black Film Festival.[56]

In 2016, WLOK acquired an FM translator in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, to be moved to Memphis and paired with WLOK, giving the station its first FM signal of any kind since WHHM-FM went off air in 1951.[62]