• 1966 QSL Card
• Thoughts from a listener

Additional notes from Frank Berry: The WGTO call letters now belong to a 1,000 watt station in Cassopolis, Michigan. www.wgtoradio.com The 540 kHz frequency is now licensed to Pine Hills/Orlando and is known as 540WFLA. Their actual call letters are WFLF (which you will hear at the top of the hour). The station is using the 970WFLA call letters as their own. Both stations are owned by Clear Channel. At one time, it was against the law to identify a station by anything other than the licensed call letters. Times have changed.

Some of the PRE-COUNTRY WGTO personalities: Dick Bennick (1970's) Al Brock (late 1970's.. right before the station went to "Disco 54") Charlie "Rock" Brown (1970's) Larry Cox (1970's) Dan Grant (1967-68) Bob Kelly (1970's) George Prescott (1970s) Ron St. John aka "Ronnie Gee" (1970's) Woody Wooden (1967-70; 1975) Dave Wright (1970's)

The mighty WGTO signed on in April of 1955 from studios in Haines City, Florida. The station was licensed for operation with 10,000 watts of power at 540 kilohertz from local sunrise to local sunset. The format was Top 40. WGTO’s transmitter was a 10 kilowatt RCA model BTA-10H. Their transmitter and towers were located three miles north of Lake Alfred on the WGTO TOWER ROAD.

WGTO is gone but the WGTO TOWER ROAD remains.

In 1958, Hubbard Broadcasting, the owners of WGTO, received FCC approval to move the city of license from Haines City to Cypress Gardens and to increase the station’s power to 50,000 watts during daytime hours. They purchased a 50 kilowatt RCA BTA-50G Ampliphase transmitter. During critical hours (the first two hours after local sunrise and the last two hours before local sunset) the station was required to reduce power to 10,000 watts using the old BTA-10H. With 50,000 watts at 540 kilohertz, the station promoted itself as “The most powerful combination in the nation.” The promotion was based on the fact that lower frequency radio signals travel farther than higher frequency radio signals. WGTO operated at the lowest AM frequency and with the highest AM power that was (and is) permitted by the FCC.

This is what WGTO's Production Room looked like until 1981. RCA console, Ampex reel to reel tape decks, Tapecaster cart machines, old OLD RCA turntables and AKG microphone.

In 1970, the FCC eliminated the critical hours requirement for WGTO and the station was permitted to operate with 50,000 watts of power from local sunrise to local sunset.

In 1973, when the country was in the midst of a fuel shortage, the United States stayed on daylight savings time year round. This created quite a problem for daytime-only stations like WGTO. They would not be permitted to sign on until 8:15 a.m. during the months of January and February, missing a great part of “morning drive”.

As a result, the FCC authorized WGTO to operate from 6 a.m. local time until local sunrise with a whopping 250 watts of power. To operate at this low power level, engineer Frank Berry operated the 10, 000 watt transmitter at a reduced power of 1,000 watts and designed circuitry to pass 250 watts into the towers while dissipating 750 watts as heat.

In 1975, the RCA 50 kilowatt transmitter was replaced with a new Gates MW-50. The new transmitter provided the station with dramatically improved reliability and far better audio quality.

In 1977, WGTO changed to a country music format and within a year had become Billboard Magazine's "Small Market Station of the Year". For almost ten years, WGTO would ride the height of it's glory and popularity.

(above) The WGTO day photo shows the equipment racks that contained the stations audio processing and the equipment for controlling the transmitters from the Cypress Gardens studios.

(above) The "WGTO night" photo shows, on the left, the Harris MW-1 night transmitter. On the right side of the photo is a rack containing the two-way and paging transmitters. If you look carefully, you can see the WGTO logo.

1978 marked another milestone for WGTO. The FCC granted authority to operate during nighttime hours with 1,000 watts of power. WGTO was now a full time station!

But as the eighties started to wind down -- with Country Music's popularity failing -- the station's ratings began to sag and profits were down. The beginning of the end came in December, 1986 when WGTO was sold to Cypress Broadcast, Ltd. and the format was changed to "gospel". In 1990, WGTO's studios were moved to Orlando.

In 1994, WGTO was sold to Paxson Broadcasting, the call letters changed to WWZN and the format was relegated to Sports. This effectively brought an end to WGTO's glorious forty year history.

Additional dialog added by Editor.