WHOO radio page
WHOO's on 1st
In the early Sixties, WHOO at 990 on the AM dial was the number one rock radio station in Central Florida. A gentleman by the name of John Rutledge was general manager of the station owned by Bluegrass Broadcasting of Kentucky. He left WHOO AM and FM to become owner (along with Robert Clark)of WLOF radio. Rutledge's personal favorite station had been the beautiful music in stereo on WHOO-FM the first to offer stereo in Central Florida. So when he left, Rutledge acquired the License to put a stereo station on the air in Winter Park with more beautiful music from studios in the Langford Hotel. And so it was that WLOQ-FM was born. The operations director and chief engineer was a female. It was the first time I had ever heard of a chief engineer named Violet. It was at least a Central Florida first. These stations (WHOO, WHOO-FM and WLOF, WLOQ) became stiff competitors and the "Sixties radio wars began in earnest.
I began visiting WHOO in 1962 while in high school (it was on the way home) and the first time I walked into the studio I was hopelessly hooked on radio. I spent every possible moment at the station. I got to know all the jocks, names like Rock Robinson, Ken Bowman, Gene Stuart, Jack Hayse, Dick Wilson, Tracy, Chuck Golder and Dale Wright to name a few. I listened to every word they said. In my neighborhood directly beside the then 10,000 watt 300 ft tower, you couldn't even hear WLOF. The two stations at 950 and 990 were just too close together. Even in the rest of the city, they were just a touch of the dial away from each other allowing folks to easily bounce back and forth even with hand tuned transistor radios of the day.
I observed radio from the WHOO side from 1962 to 1964 as a visitor, and 64 to 66 as an employee, working the FM board for Cecil West (a guy who really knows the WHOO story) and 1965 when I first went on the air on WHOO AM as Dick Shannon until mid 1966 when I defected to WLOF. The last program director that I worked for and I were already on two different frequencies. I think he was French.
From 1966 until WHOO went country format, I was on the other side of the Radio Wars battle from Channel 95 AM and WLOQ-FM and finally ending up full-time at WLOF. Win or lose, powerful or towerful, I enjoyed working at all four of the stations and meeting many incredible radio characters (You even learn from the prima donnas) and some just plain nice folks. Some are pictured on these pages. We'll take a moment to remember WHOO, RADIO 99 in the early Sixties.


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