City | Orlando, Florida |
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Broadcast area | Central Florida |
Branding | News 96.5 WDBO |
Slogan | Where Orlando Turns First for Breaking News, Weather and Traffic |
Frequency | 96.5 MHz (also on HD Radio) |
First air date | 1952 (as WHOO-FM) |
Format | News/Talk |
ERP | 100,000 watts |
HAAT | 454 meters |
Class | C |
Facility ID | 23443 |
Former callsigns | WHOO-FM (1952-1987) WHTQ (1987-2011) |
Affiliations | ABC News |
Owner |
Cox Communications (Cox Radio, Inc.) |
Sister stations |
WCFB, WDBO, WMMO, WPYO, WWKA part of Cox cluster with TV station WFTV |
Webcast | Listen Live |
Website | News 96.5 |
WDBO-FM is a radio station in Orlando, Florida, broadcasting at 96.5 FM with a news-talk format. Owned by Cox Radio, its studios are located in Orlando and the transmitter tower is in Bithlo.
The callsign WDBO-FM was originally used at the 92.3 MHz frequency, as a sister station to WDBO and WDBO-TV. When Katz Broadcasting bought the radio stations (Katz owned WDBO-TV competitor WFTV, now owned by Cox Communications), WDBO-FM re-formatted as a country music station, and changed its callsign to WWKA. WDBO-TV changed its callsign to WCPX, and later to WKMG.
96.5 in Orlando was previously WHOO-FM, sister to WHOO 990 AM. The station was originally owned by T.K. Communications and sold to Granum Communications in 1994. It was acquired by Infinity Broadcasting (now CBS Radio) before it was traded to Cox, along with WMMO and WHOO so Infinity could acquire WCKG in Chicago.
On March 1, 1987, at Midnight, WHOO began stunting with nonstop songs by The Beatles (coincidentally, the first ever Beatles CDs would be released that same day.) Shortly after, the station flipped to a format deemed "adult rock" under new calls WHTQ.
The station had a classic rock format, which lasted 23 years. On February 18, 2011, at 5 p.m., after playing Pride (In The Name Of Love) by U2 and after a commercial set, it announced that it would tweak its classic rock format to add new songs, and modify its moniker to "96 Rock", kicking off the tweaked classic rock format with Alive by Pearl Jam. In addition for WHTQ tweaking their classic rock format, WJRR switched formats back to active rock from alternative rock.