WHBO - A History
WHBO-AM 1470 Dunedin – In October 2005, Genesis Communications reinstated Tampa Bay’s historic WHBO calls on Dunedin’s AM-1470 WWBA, and established a sports/talk format branded Sportsradio AM-1470. The WHBO call letters were previously used in the market from 1948 to 1991 – first as a Tampa country music station on AM-1050 and then as an oldies station licensed to Pinellas Park on AM-1040.
WHBO’s sports programming moved from AM-1470, licensed to Dunedin, to AM-1040, and its city of license changed to Pinellas Park in September 2008. In 2010, the station’s Tampa offices and studios at 4300 West Cypress relocated to 800 8th Avenue SE in Largo.
WHBO dropped its ESPN affiliation and became one of the inaugural NBC Sports Network stations on October 1, 2012. However, by the end of 2017, NBC Sports Network had greatly reduced its programming and WHBO added shows from Fox Sports Radio and CBS Sports Radio.
Since August 2006 when guy-wires on one of its three towers were clipped during construction in the tower site neighborhood, WHBO has been operating under an STA (Special Temporary Authority) with power reduced to 3.6 kilowatts day and 0.42 kilowatts at night, employing a directional antenna during nighttime hours. Today (2020) WHBO continues to operate at the greatly reduced power due to litigation issues and may be forced to find a new transmitter site.
In early 2019, Neal Ardman’s NIA Broadcasting began operating WHBO under an LMA with Genesis Communications and branded it SportsTalk 1040. That turned out to be short-lived when Genesis re-structured the station in May 2020 and flipped it to Talk 1040 with a lineup of conservative talk show hosts.
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Station History
2005 - 2020 Other Tampa Bay Area Stations (History)
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