WHAD


WHAD is a non-commercial radio station licensed to Delafield, Wisconsin and serving the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Part of Wisconsin Public Radio, it airs WPR's "Ideas Network", consisting of news and talk programming. Like the Milwaukee area's other NPR station, WUWM, the station airs BBC World Service in the overnight hours. WHAD maintains a local news staff and cut-ins outside the main WPR network, and the station's facilities, located on the seventh floor of 310 W. Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee, originate some programming for the network, including Kathleen Dunn's afternoon program until her retirement in the summer of 2017. WHAD has its own 414 studio line for Milwaukee callers to call into locally originated programs. Because of the lack of a sister station providing WPR's News and Classical Network to Milwaukee, WHAD provides the HD2 Classical Network via HD Radio to the market via their HD2 subchannel, which only differs from the News and Classical Network in having a full-classical format overlaying NPR and APM news programming exclusive to WUWM in the market; it became the market's only classical music station over the air in 2007 after WFMR abandoned the format commercially.
The current-day WHAD is of no relation to the WHAD in Milwaukee which broadcast in the 1920s and early 1930s under the ownership of Marquette University before being merged in 1934 into what is now the current-day station WISN.
The station's transmitter is located in western Waukesha County just south of Delafield, almost halfway between Milwaukee and Madison. It thus provides some coverage to eastern portions of Madison when Ideas Network flagship WHA must dramatically reduce its power at night. The WHAD signal also reaches into the northern Chicagoland area specifically Lake and McHenry counties, complementing WPR's WEPS coverage of the northern suburbs and competing with fellow NPR member WBEZ, the signal of which also reaches into Southeast Wisconsin. Since its transmitter is located further south and west than most of Milwaukee's other major FM stations, its signal is not as strong in the northern part of the market. Sister stations WRST in Oshkosh and WSHS in Sheboygan provide Ideas Network service to the northern part of the nine-county Milwaukee market area, and other distant portions didn't get a clear signal for Ideas Network programming at all until the advent of streaming audio.