WHPH - FM 97.7 - Jemison, Al

WHPH started out on 90.3 on April 18, 1966, licensed to Hanover. It was only the second high school FM station in NJ, the first being 88.7 WRRH in Franklin Lakes. An aircheck of WHPH's sign on (read live in the studio by Ted Schober) and sign off (via tape ... See more by Al Rettig) in April 1966 can be heard here. WHPH began with a "flamethrowing" 10 watts out of a single-ring antenna on the Hanover Twsp. Municipal Building in Whippany. It was on remote control from Hanover Park Regional High School in East Hanover. Kicking on the carrier consisted of throwing a single toggle switch in the bomb shelter-sized studio at the high school. The prime technical force behind getting WHPH on FM was Ted Schober, who was a 1st Phone licensee before he was out of high school. He did the frequency search and all the requisite paperwork himself, and was in his junior or senior year when he signed the station on. The station was highly supported by then-Principal Gerhard V. Kellner, who positively loved radio and was a fellow alumnus of Hammond High School's Jean Shepherd. The first news director at the station was Tony Russomanno. At the time, WHPH had tried (and failed) to get the Associated Press to donate a news teletype to the station, so Tony would buy the New York Times from his Uncle Charlie's ice cream store in Whippany (the only store in the area to carry the Times) and read news stories from the paper, over the air. Some famous people who got their start at WHPH include Andrew Orgel, John "Paul Henderson" Sliwa, Alan Parnow and the late Ron "LaFong" Maher, who was a naturally talented performer, who became a selfless supporter of community theater in Florida. In the 1970's, Whippany Park High School was built and a modest radio studio was designed into it so that they, too, could also originate WHPH programming live via the Municipal Building's transmitter. However, in 1971, WJSV (see above) signed on at 90.5 from Morristown and given the receiver technology at the time, WHPH was all but silenced, unless you were within a half-mile of the Municipal Building. Somehow, WHPH and WJSV worked out a share-time deal on the Morristown transmitter at 90.5, at which point WHPH abandoned the then-virtually useless 90.3. The share-time arrangement had its advantages, as it helped both school systems to maintain more airtime, and meet the revised FCC requirements for weekly hours on the air. This was all well and good until the Hanover Park Regional School Board decided that it wanted to eliminate a faculty advisor position, and for purely nasty, pecuniary political reasons, took WHPH off the air once and for all in the late 1980's. The FCC officially deleted this station in April 1990. Over the years, the station featured an Adult Contemporary and AOR format.

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