Orlando Got Its Country Station Over the Objections of the People Who Worked There

On a December 21, three Orlando broadcasters locked themselves inside their own studio. They were not protesting pay or hours. They were protesting country music.

The standoff ended within a few hours, and the format changed anyway. Katz Broadcasting had bought the station, 92.3 became WWKA, the moniker went up as K92FM, and Orlando had a country radio station whether the people who worked there wanted one or not. That was 1982. The station is still on the air today under Cox Media Group, still playing country, and it has outlived every person who was angry about it.

We keep coming back to that story because it is the cleanest illustration of something we think is still true about this region: in Central Florida, the country audience shows up before the people in charge believe it exists.

A station with a very different past

What became K92.3 signed on in 1949 as WDBO-FM, a CBS Radio Network affiliate that spent its early years simulcasting its AM sister station. Dramas, comedies, news, sports. A 1950 advertisement bragged that WDBO had more listeners than the next three network stations in town combined.

So the people barricading the studio door in 1982 were not cranks. They were defending 33 years of institutional identity against what looked to them like a downgrade. Country music, in the Orlando of 1982, was not understood as the format that would eventually anchor the market. It was understood as the thing happening somewhere north of here.

They were wrong, and the correction took about a decade to become undeniable.

Ocala ran the same experiment twelve years later

Drive northwest and you find the identical story with the identical ending. The station now known as 93.7 K-Country signed on in November 1960 as WMOP-FM playing middle of the road programming. It became an easy listening station in the 1970s, then adult contemporary, then spent eight years as a Top 40 outlet called Z93.

In 1994 it gave up and flipped to country, taking the call letters WOGK. It then became the most listened to radio station in its market, and it has stayed at or near the top ever since. Saga Communications paid 9.3 million dollars for it in 2018, which is not a price you pay for a station anyone considers a gamble.

Two stations, two markets, twelve years apart, both arriving at country as a late decision after exhausting the formats that seemed safer. In both cases the audience was already there. What was missing was anyone willing to bet on it.

The pattern, and where it leaves us now

We have made the case before that Central Florida did not import country music and that the region has a real and documented country music circuit. The radio history adds something to that argument. It is not just that the audience has been here. It is that the audience has repeatedly been underestimated by the exact people whose job it was to measure it.

Our view is that live country in Central Florida is sitting in the 1981 position right now. Not the music. The infrastructure. The region has roughly four million people, a country station that has held a top market position for four decades, and a touring circuit that still routes a great deal of mid level country around us toward Tampa and Jacksonville. The gap between the size of the audience and the number of shows booked for it is the same kind of gap that existed in 1982, and it closes the same way: somebody decides to find out.

The counter-argument is not that the audience is small. It is that measuring an audience and filling a field are different problems. Radio can be wrong cheaply. A promoter cannot. Advertising revenue adjusts month to month, while a festival commits to a date, a venue and a guarantee a year in advance and then finds out whether it guessed right.

Why we are the wrong people to ask

We should be direct about this, because the argument above happens to be extremely convenient for us. We are building a country festival in Apopka. Every sentence we write about an underserved Central Florida country audience is a sentence that serves our interests, and you should discount it accordingly.

The strongest version of the case against us is one we have already written about ourselves: three country festivals went dark this year. Those were not run by fools. They were run by people who looked at an audience, believed in it, and were wrong about how much of it would buy a ticket. The 1982 radio story has survivor bias built into it, because the station that flipped and failed does not get a retrospective written about it in 2026.

So we will put it this way instead. The 1982 protest is not proof that we are right. It is proof that the gatekeepers can be sincerely, professionally, unanimously wrong about what Central Florida wants to hear, and that it can take a decade for the record to show it. We find that worth remembering, and we would find it worth remembering even if we were not the ones with money on the outcome.

Frequently Asked: When did Orlando get a country radio station?

Orlando’s country station at 92.3 FM launched in 1982, when Katz Broadcasting bought the former WDBO-FM, changed the call letters to WWKA and branded it K92FM. The station had been on the air since 1949 as a CBS affiliate, and the format change was contentious enough that three broadcasters locked themselves in the studio on December 21 in protest before the switch went through. The station is now owned by Cox Media Group and known as K92.3. In the Ocala and Gainesville market, 93.7 K-Country flipped to country in 1994 after eight years as a Top 40 station and became its market’s most listened to station.

Sunset Country Fest returns on April 3, 2027 at the Apopka Amphitheater, 3710 Jason Dwelley Pkwy, Apopka, FL 32712, with gates at 2:00 PM.

Sources & References

• WWKA station history, including the 1982 format change and the studio protest
• WOGK station history, the 1994 country flip and its market performance

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Last updated: October 2, 2026 · Sunset Country Fest Editorial Team · Contact Us