WERZ

WERZ (107.1 FM) is a radio station licensed to Exeter, New Hampshire, and located at 107.1 on the FM dial. The station is owned by iHeartMedia. WERZ broadcasts from studios located on Lafayette Road in Portsmouth and from a transmitter located on Long Hill in Stratham. Its on-air call sign is "Z107, Exeter/Portsmouth". WERZ's signal serves the coastal area from Salem Harbor up north to Biddeford, Maine, including the Portsmouth and Dover-Rochester areas of New Hampshire, southern York County, Maine and northeastern Massachusetts, where it overlaps with sister station WXKS-FM from Boston.
History.
The station went on the air September 21, 1972, as WKXR-FM. In March 1982, the call letters were changed to WERZ and the format was changed to Top 40/CHR. Their first slogan was "The New Z107, The Continuous Music FM", then later, "WERZ107, New Hampshire's Hot FM". The first program director was Jack O'Brien and the studios were located at 11 Downing Court in Exeter.
Boston area concert promoter Don Law's Precision Media purchased the station in 1986 and modified the format to a hybrid AC/Top 40 format (Hot AC), with the slogan, "The All New 107 FM WERZ, Playing Today's Hits And Yesterday's Classics". In 1989, WERZ had a slogan of "13 Hits in a row" and competed wildly against WHEB. Pete Falconi was Program Director and allowed air staff such as Lindsay Robins, Tim Fontaine, and Jeff the Doctor, to produce authentic, and unique radio shows. The result was pumping out as many hits an hour as possible, and providing the community of the Seacoast with live remote broadcasts. Ratings as per Arbitron (1989) competed well with WHEB.
Specialty weekend programs helped to boost ratings, including the legendary "American Top 40" with Shadoe Stevens, the "Weekly Top 40" with Rick Dees, and "The WERZ's House Party Saturday Night" featuring uptempo party songs and a megamix of popular dance music, as well as frequent prize giveaways and heavy listener interaction and requests.
WERZ was a Hot AC throughout all of the 2000s, during which their slogan was "The Hits of the '80s, the '90s, and today. We are 107.1 WERZ" (As with all prior iterations, the "we are Z..." was played off the call letters: We R Z...). For the first time in December 2008, WERZ went all-Christmas. After the holiday season, WERZ became an Adult Contemporary station playing an even bigger mix of the '80s, the '90's, and Today. Then, in December 2009, WERZ went Christmas again and this time returned as Hot AC with their fifth slogan, "The '80s, The '90s, and now are all on today's mix, 107.1 WERZ".
In February 2010, WSKX and WERZ announced that Matty in the Morning, syndicated by WXKS-FM out of Boston, would be moving from WSKX to WERZ.
On October 4, 2012, at 3 pm, WERZ flipped back to their Top 40/CHR roots as "The All New Z107, The Seacoast's Hit Music", reviving the format and branding that WERZ used from 1982 to 1986.