WDAO (1210 AM) – branded Real Rhythm Of The City – is a commercial daytime-only urban adult contemporary radio station licensed to Dayton, Ohio. Owned by minority-owned business Johnson Communications, Inc., WDAO serves the Dayton metropolitan area. Originally established in Springfield in 1947 as WWSO, the station relocated to Dayton in 1954 under the WAVI call sign—the fourth AM station to operate in Dayton proper. Along with a variety of formats ranging from big band to adult contemporary to country, WAVI became an early adopter of the talk radio format in 1971 and was one of the first radio homes for political commentator Mike Gallagher. Assuming the call letters and format of its former FM adjunct WDAO in 1985, it later became the first and only minority-owned radio station in Dayton in 1987, a distinction it holds to this day. The WDAO studios are located in Dayton's Wright-Dunbar Historic District, while the transmitter also resides in Dayton. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WDAO is relayed over low-power Drexel FM translator W272DR (102.3 FM) and is available online. History WWSO in Springfield Radio Springfield, Inc., applied with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build a new radio station in Springfield, Ohio, on July 15, 1946. After an amendment, the FCC granted a permit for 1210 kHz on February 14, 1947, and WWSO went on the air September 4 of that year. Ownership turned over twice in the station's early years, including a sale in 1949 to Bradley Kincaid and S. A. Cisler and a 1952 transfer to Kincaid alone. Move to Dayton as WAVI In 1954, Kincaid sold WWSO to a consortium headed by disc jockey Tommy Sutton, who had plied his trade at WING (1410 AM), and H. K. "Bud" Crowl, a state legislator from Dayton. The call letters were changed to WAVI that March, and in October, the FCC approved the station to move from Springfield to Dayton. The staff were retained, while new facilities were built on a plot of land at Heck and Cincinnati streets adjacent to Interstate 75 to bring the "Birthplace of Aviation" just its fourth radio station. Even before the building was complete, WAVI began operating from Dayton on February 28, 1955, broadcasting for a month from Sutton's basement. For most of the late 1950s and 1960s, it carried a big band "good music" format—with the exception of