WDBO (580 AM) is a commercial radio station broadcasting a news/talk radio format. Licensed to Orlando, Florida, the station is owned by Cox Media Group. The studios and offices are located on North John Young Parkway in Orlando. WDBO’s transmitter power is 5,000 watts. At night, it uses a directional antenna to protect other stations on AM 580. The transmitter tower is off West Kennedy Boulevard in Maitland. Programming is also heard on FM translator W297BB at 107.3 MHz. History Early years WDBO is Orlando's oldest radio station, signing on the air on . It was first licensed to Rollins College in Winter Park. In its early years, it used a number of frequencies, but by 1933, it settled on 580 kilocycles. In 1935, it got a boost in power from 250 watts to 1,000 watts. It was owned by the Orlando Broadcasting Company, and was a network affiliate of CBS Radio. WDBO carried the CBS line up of dramas, comedies, news, sports, soap operas, game shows and big band broadcasts during the "Golden Age of Radio". In 1949, WDBO-FM (92.3 FM) was put on the air as a simulcast of WDBO. Five years later, WDBO-TV came on the air, the first television station in Central Florida. In 1982, the firm that owned WDBO-AM-FM-TV, The Outlet Company, sold the radio stations to Katz Broadcasting. (The TV station eventually became WKMG-TV.) When the stations were sold, WDBO-FM was re-formatted as a country music station, "K92FM", with the call sign WWKA. Middle of the road to adult contemporary to talk As network programming moved from radio to television in the 1950s, WDBO switched to a full service middle of the road format of popular adult music, news and sports. The station also joined the ABC News Radio Network, and slowly added more talk radio programs. By the 1980s, "58 WDBO" began to scale back on MOR music, and in 1985, the station dropped MOR entirely switching to adult contemporary, also along with news, music, and sports. The change in music came shortly after Leesburg's WHLY switched from its adult contemporary format to Top 40. When the 1990s began rolling along, WDBO was airing a mix of news/talk and adult contemporary. But in 1994, the station dropped music entirely and it became "NewsTalk 580 WDBO", which for years had been Greater Orlando's highest-rated AM news/talk station. In 1997, WDBO and WWKA were acquired