On April 1, 1988, the call letters were changed to WJHM, and the station adopted a CHR/Urban format targeting a multicultural audience as 102 Jamz under the direction of Program Director Duff Lindsey and consultant Jerry Clifton.[7] The station was an immediate success with listeners and within two years, ascended to the top of the 12+ Arbitron Ratings. Some of the DJs included Joe Nasty doing mornings, Magic Scott (now Cadillac Jack in Philadelphia) doing afternoons, and Cedric Hollywood as mid-day jock (also Music Director). WJHM was purchased by Chancellor Media in 1997. In late 1998, longtime music director Cedric Hollywood, who had been with the station since its inception in 1988, left “102 Jamz” to go to WEDR in Miami. Soon after, it started adding urban based songs to its playlist. Although the station was labeled as “Rhythmic”, WJHM remained an Urban station at its core, but would later drop rhythmic-based songs when it got competition when WCFB acquired an urban AC format, resulting in WJHM shifting to urban altogether.
The late 1990s brought a time of mergers with Chancellor merging with Evergreen and forming AMFM, Inc., who hold ownership of WJHM until it merged with Clear Channel in 2000. To comply with FCC ownership rules, Clear Channel sold WJHM to Infinity Broadcasting (later CBS Radio) in 2001. It briefly reverted to rhythmic by 2005 to go up against WPYO, although this was unsuccessful due to WCFB (WPYO’s sister station) having almost no competitor during the rhythmic experiment. WJHM shortly reverted to urban to challenge WCFB. Given WJHM’s Urban heritage status in Orlando, it was in competition with both WCFB and WPYO (both owned by Cox Radio). Although it was one of the top ranking radio stations in the market, WJHM suffered the rare setback of ranking behind WPYO in the Arbitron ratings, rare to have an Urban format rank behind a Rhythmic.
WJHM’s logo under previous “102 JAMZ” branding
In the fall of 2011, WJHM began adding Rhythmic product again. Despite its continued urban contemporary tenure per Nielsen BDS reports rather than being a rhythmic, it continued on Mediabase‘s rhythmic panel during this tenure. Since the shift back to Rhythmic, WJHM added more pop tracks, such as You Make Me Feel… by Cobra Starship[8] & Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5.[9] This move was due to WJHM looking at challenging WXXL, the market’s only Top 40/CHR and former sister station. However, Cox-owned WPYO, whose Rhythmic direction slightly favored hip hop but whose playlist was almost identical to WJHM, continued to surpass WJHM in the ratings. In late January 2012, WJHM made more changes by dropping Rickey Smiley‘s syndicated morning show in favor of a more music-intensive morning block,[10] terminated 18-year air-staffer Jay Love from the roster,[11] and began transitioning to a rhythmic top 40 direction altogether, as their playlist began including artists like Jessie J, Avicii, Kelly Clarkson, fun., The Wanted, and Adele. It also dropped their longtime slogan “Non-Stop Hip-Hop and R&B”, replacing it with “102 Minutes of Commercial-Free Music”. The non-urban content that WJHM plays also receives airplay at both WXXL and adult top 40 WOMX, WJHM’s sister station. By February 22, 2012, the station completed the shift to Rhythmic Top 40, joining the market’s existing rhythmic WPYO as Nielsen BDS moved it to the Top40/Rhythmic panel citing a low emphasis on urban contemporary tracks and since making the transition adding more Pop tracks. Along with these changes, it dropped the Sunday morning gospel programming syndicated from WVEE, although WJHM’s HD2 subchannel broadcasts a Gospel format full-time.
Between 2000 and early 2012, WJHM was one of CBS Radio’s only young demographic-targeting Urban stations along with Atlanta‘s WVEE-FM and Charlotte’s WPEG, although all of them are in the southern United States. Its sister station WPGC-FM in Washington, D.C.–Baltimore, Maryland was an urban contemporary reporter per Nielsen BDS and CBS Radio[12] from 1997 to 2012, while they reported to the rhythmic contemporary panel at Mediabase, due to being a hybrid of both formats (also known as “Churban”), despite Radio One having WKYS and WERQ-FM directly competing in the area. WPGC returned to the BDS Rhythmic reporting panel in June 2012.
