CKLH-FM is a Canadianradio station, broadcasting at 102.9 FM in Hamilton, Ontario. The station broadcasts an adult contemporary format branded as 102-9 K-Lite. The station is owned by Bell Media. CKLH's studios are located on Upper Wentworth Street in Hamilton, while its transmitter is located atop the Niagara Escarpment near Burlington. The station received CRTCapproval on May 8, 1986, and was launched on October 7, 1986, by Armadale Communications, the owner of CKOC. The LH in the call sign stood for Les Horton, CKOC's first broadcast engineer. Armadale sold the stations to London Communications in 1993. London Communications subsequently sold them to Telemediain 1999, and Telemedia was itself acquired by Standard Broadcasting in 2002. In October 2007, Astral Media acquired Standard Broadcasting's terrestrial radio and television assets, including CKLH. Shortly after Astral acquired the station, CKLH-FM adopted a more adult top 40 format; this ended in November 2009 when the station returned to its adult contemporary status after Boxing Day2009, and regarding the flip from adult contemporary to adult hits at then-sister CJEZ in Toronto, which became CHBM after that. As of 2016, CKLH plays Christmas music beginning in the last week of November up until Boxing Day. Sister stationCHRE-FM in St. Catharines also begins playing Christmas music around the same time. Most recently, CKLH has begun to skew towards a younger-leaning direction, like its EZ Rock sisters owned that were owned by Astral. Though the station added more adult top 40 songs, they remain adult contemporary because this station was the only AC owned by Astral Media in the GTA because of sister station CHRE-FM being blocked by CHRY-FM due to adjacent channel interference. In addition, it still reports on Mediabase and Nielsen BDS panels as a Canadian AC station. Most of the classic hits were moved to sister oldies station CKOC and then-sister adult hits station CHBM-FM. Even though CKLH-FM is the only AC station in Hamilton, other nearby AC stations are Toronto's CHFI-FM, St. Catharines' CHRE-FM, Kitchener'sCHYM-FM and Brantford's CKPC-FM. Currently, only Vancouver's, Calgary's, Edmonton's and Winnipeg's are served by only one AC station in terms of top-10 Canadian markets. With the merger of Astral Media and Bell Media, CKLH became a Bell Media owned station on July 5, 2013.
