
WHEB

WHEB (100.3 MHz) is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and serving the Seacoast Region of New Hampshire and Southern Maine. The station airs a mainstream rock radio format and is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc.. It is consistently one of the top two stations in the Nielsen ratings' Portsmouth-Dover-Rochester radio market. WHEB is the home of regional comedy radio show, "The Morning Buzz," hosted by Greg Kretschmar. The rest of the day, are local or national DJs.
WHEB broadcasts in the HD Radio format. A commercial-free dance music format airs over the HD2 subchannel, under the brand, "24 Hour Cardio Mix". WHEB's studios, offices and transmitter are on Lafayette Road in Portsmouth.
History.
WHEB's history goes back to 1932, when WHEB AM first signed on the air, one of only three radio stations in New Hampshire in the early days of broadcasting. It was owned by Granite State Broadcasting and operated on 740 kilocycles, broadcasting at only 250 watts. WHEB was a daytimer, required to go off the air at sunset. It later moved to AM 750, but still as a daytimer, because the 750 frequency is reserved for a clear channel station in Atlanta, 50,000–watt WSB. In 1959, WHEB was acquired by Knight Broadcasting of New Hampshire.
On January 14, 1964, WHEB put an FM station on the air, 100.3 WHEB-FM. The two stations simulcast a full service middle of the road (MOR) format. Even though few radios could receive FM signals in the mid-60s, the FM station allowed some listeners to continue hearing WHEB after sunset. At first, WHEB-FM was only powered at 5,650 watts, a fraction of its current output. For a few years, 1967 to 1971, WHEB-FM took the call sign WPFM but it continued to simulcast 750 WHEB most of the day.
In the early 1980s, WHEB-FM got a boost in its effective radiated power (ERP) to 31,000 watts, coupled with its own separate programming, a Top 40 format. The station adopted the nickname The STAR STATION, and many listeners had a very popular yellow square sticker on their cars with a Star in the middle and the call sign under it. At one promotion this sticker could get you Gas for 25 cents a gallon, causing Long lines out onto Rt 1. The AM station continued its full service MOR sound. Within a few years, WHEB-FM switched to an album rock format. The AM station, still only a 1,000–watt daytimer, became a simulcast of WHEB-FM, for several more years.
In 1991, Knight Broadcasting decided the AM station was no longer needed, as most listeners could receive WHEB in stereo on 100.3 FM, rather than listen to the weak AM station required to go off the air at sunset. WHEB AM 750 was taken dark and the license handed in to the Federal Communications Commission. (Portsmouth's other AM radio station, 1380 WPLA, also co-owned with WHEB, went dark in 2015.) With the WHEB call sign no longer used on AM 750, WHEB-FM dropped the FM suffix from its call letters and became simply WHEB. Also in the 1990s, 100.3 WHEB got a boost in its ERP to 50,000 watts, the maximum power permitted for most New Hampshire FM stations.
In 2000, WHEB was acquired by Clear Channel Communications, the forerunner to current owner iHeartMedia.