WHBL
 | |
| City | Sheboygan, Wisconsin |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Sheboygan County |
| Branding | 1330 & 101.5, WHBL |
| Slogan |
Sheboygan's Choice for News News, Talk, Sports |
| Frequency | 1330 (kHz) |
| Translator(s) | 101.5 W268BR (Sheboygan) |
| First air date | November 7, 1927 (as WHBM) |
| Format | News/Talk |
| Power |
5,000 watts (day) 1,000 watts (night) |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 9967 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 43°43′14″N 87°44′4″W / 43.72056°N 87.73444°W |
| Former callsigns | WHBM (1927-1928) |
| Affiliations | Fox News Radio |
| Owner |
Duey E. Wright (Midwest Communications, Inc.) |
| Sister stations | WBFM, WHBZ, WXER |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | WHBL.com |
WHBL (1330 AM) is a radio station in Sheboygan, Wisconsin with a news/talk format. The station is owned Wausau-based Midwest Communications, along with three other sister FM stations in the market. In addition to local and syndicated hosts, the station also carries Milwaukee Brewers baseball, Green Bay Packers football, Wisconsin Badgers football and men's basketball, and local high school sports. The station went on the air on November 7, 1927 under the ownership of The Sheboygan Press, carrying the call letters WHBM for a short time before changing to WHBL the next year.
WHBL is also carried on an FM translator station in the immediate Sheboygan area, W268BR, at 101.5 FM, which like WHBL, transmits from the Midwest tower site on Sheboygan's south side. W268BR launched operations on April 16, 2016.
Programming
The station's programming is standard for an AM talk station (and is effectively run in the same manner as Green Bay sister station WTAQ, including imaging), including a local morning show (Sheboygan's Morning News with Kelly Meyer) with the daily Focus on the Family commentary, John Muir (of no relation to the naturalist) from WTAQ, and national conservative talk programs the rest of the day, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and America Now. The Clark Howard Show is at the end of the evening, followed by Coast to Coast AM nightly. The station also maintains local rights to the Glenn Beck Program, but only carries a weekend 'best-of' compilation of the daily series. The station's weather forecasts are provided by WLUK-TV in Green Bay, a deal that was retained despite WLUK losing cable carriage in Sheboygan in 2011 due to outside corporate factors involving Fox programming.
Weekends consist mainly of general advice shows, including Kim Komando, Handel on the Law, Legal Defense, with local attorney Kirk Obear via a brokered programming arrangement, Moneytalk with Bob Brinker and Leo Laporte's The Tech Guy, along with sports programs such as Pro Football Weekly and the regional outdoors show Outdoors Radio with Dan Small. Local church programming and The Lutheran Hour airs on Sunday morning, along with the polka-focused Polkatime America. All programming on weekdays and weekends is subject to sports or breaking news pre-emption.
Jerry Bader had been with WHBL in some form since the 1980s, at first as the station's news director through the 1980s and most of the '90s (outside of a year with WCNZ) until the 2000 purchase of WHBL by Midwest. Under new management, WHBL went from a full-service format to matching that of WTAQ, and Bader was groomed into a political talk show host. WHBL continued to carry the WTAQ version of the show live after he moved there in 2004, along with WSAU in Wausau, and Bader also had the title of program director for WTAQ. Bader was let go from Midwest Communications after his February 8, 2018 program, claiming that his "never Trump" political stance had caused friction with station management; this in turn ended his run on WHBL.[1] WTAQ's John Muir was named the new mid-morning host by April 2018.
References
- ↑ Ryman, Richard (8 February 2018). "Jerry Bader cites Trump coverage for loss of WTAQ radio show". Green Bay Press-Gazette. Retrieved 10 February 2018.