KHHZ (97.7 FM, ) is a

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

broadcasting a

Regional Mexican Regional Mexican music refers collectively to the regional subgenres of the country music of Mexico and its derivatives from the Southwestern United States. Each subgenre is representative of a certain region and its popularity also varies by ...

format. Licensed to

Gridley, California Gridley is a city in Butte County, California, United States, south of Chico, California, and north of Sacramento, California. The population as of April 1, 2020, is 7,421. California State Route 99 runs through Gridley and Interstate 5 in Cal ...

, United States, the station serves the Chico area. The station is currently owned by Bustos Media, through licensee Bustos Media Holdings, LLC.

History

Oroville Radio, Incorporated, filed with the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

(FCC) on June 25, 1976, to build a new FM radio station in Oroville on 97.7 Mhz. The FCC approved the application on March 15, 1977; the station permit bore the call sign KFAM before Vernon Uecker acquired majority control later in the year. The call letters were changed to KEWE before the station began broadcasting on July 6, 1979. It aired a

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...

music format; Uecker selected big band because he wanted a more active format than the beautiful music then in vogue, which he termed "background music"; a format he "didn't want to do". The class A station was approved to change to a class B1 outlet by the FCC in 1991. In 1996, a 71-year-old Uecker announced he was retiring and sold KORV (1340 AM) and KEWE to Z-Spanish Radio Holdings, the highest bidder for the station. On April 1, Z-Spanish took over operation of KEWE. It changed the call letters to KZCO and began programming

music, using its satellite-delivered Z Hot Hits programming. Some upset listeners commented that the format flip was a sign of the times; one told the '' Paradise Post'', "We are being invaded" by Hispanics. A group later bought back KORV to relaunch it as KEWE with big band music in 1998. Z-Spanish changed the call sign from KZCO to KHHZ on March 10, 2000. In April 2000, Z-Spanish was purchased by

Entravision Communications Entravision Communications Corporation is an American media company based in Santa Monica, California. Entravision primarily caters to the Spanish language in the United States, Spanish-speaking Hispanic and Latino Americans, Hispanic community ...

. Entravision then sold the Chico station to

Clear Channel Communications iHeartMedia, Inc., or CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc., formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc., a company founded by ...

, which relaunched it as KHHZ "Radio México, La Gran X" and increased the station's local content. Clear Channel then sold its entire Chico cluster in 2004 to Deer Creek Broadcasting, controlled by Elliot Evers, for $5.1 million. The station's city of license was changed from Oroville to Gridley in 2008 to allow KMJE to change its city of license from Gridley to

Woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with woody plants (trees and shrubs), or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the '' plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunli ...

. In 2019, Bustos acquired three stations in the market and proceeded to trade KFMF 93.9 and KZAP 96.7 to Deer Creek in exchange for KHHZ. It then converted KHHZ to its La Gran D format.

References

External links

{{Bustos Media HHZ Regional Mexican radio stations in the United States HHZ 1979 establishments in California Radio stations established in 1979