Radio Nick's Island Paradise

Delmar Nicholson was known as "Radio Nick" in his Florida homeland. He was born in Orlando in 1899, 20 years before the city's first radio station, WFAW-AM signed on. The station became WQAM in 1923. Two years earlier, at age 21, Nicholson went to Philadelphia to study radio engineering. He got the nickname "Radio Nick" for building wireless sets.  He kept the name when he became a DJ later on Orlando's WDBO-AM.

After his schooling, he opened Orlando's first store to sell and repair radio set. He sold it in 1927.  On WDBO in 1931 he scheduled a fund-raising stunt described as a battle to the death, with three rattlesnakes, a pine snake, a coachwhip, an indigo and a water moccasin.  He wisely backed out.

Nicholson was also a grower of orchids, an amateur herpetologist, and helped set up the a city zoo in Lake Lorna Doone Park  in1935. He also had civic ambitions. He helped found Goodwill Industries of Central Florida and served a term on the Orlando City Council. It must have been some combination of these ideas that drove him to buy an island.

In the early 1900s the little island in the middle of Bay Lake was known as Raz Island. It was named after a  family that farmed the roughly triangular isle. In 1937, Nicholson purchased it for $800. He renamed the island "Idle Bay Isle" and lived there for 20 years with his wife and pet crane. Already retired from radio, he grew orchids, joined the Florida State Horticultural Society, and the Florida Audubon Society. He sold the island to a local executive who used it as a hunting retreat and renamed it Riles Island. More here.

Nicholson, who died in 1978 at the age of 79 he was cremated but he has a headstone that reads "Radio Nick" just below his name. In 1965 Disney bought his island paradise and added fill to expand it to 11.5 acres. He named it Treasure Island, then re-named it Discovery Island when the pirate-theme played out. Disney closed it in 1999 after some animal abuse scandals and it is now abandoned and growing wild. Nicholson would have approved. 

WDBO— Full Circle

Just last week 580 WDBO-AM started it's simulcast on 96.5 as WDBO-FM. Up until then it had been known as WHTQ-FM. Prior to that, WHTQ had been simulcasting the DBO programming on it's HD2 subchannel, but nobody listens to HD radio so nobody cared. WHTQ's former Classic Rock playlist is now relegated to obscurity on that same HD2 subchannel. Orlando is market #35 with a whopping 1.5 million residents. If 1% of them have HD tuners that's a total broadcast audience of about 15,000. That sound like a lot but even if they captured 100% of their total possible audience that's still diddly. Arbitron doesn't rate markets below Casper pop. 63,000. Even if WDBO-HD2 carried 100% of it's total possible audience (which isn't possible)  that's sort of like having a 25 share in Casper WY.

Regardless, what that whole game of musical chairs reminded me of was that WDBO (like many other AM/FM operations) used to simulcast AM and FM back in the 1970s.  WDBO AM/FM were MOR/full-service during this era. They were even transmitting in mono. WDBO-AM has been on air since 1924, the FM side signed on in 1949, (some sources say 1952) starting as a simulcast on 92.3 FM. That continued until late 1971, when they parted ways and flipped to MOR. They actually describe the format in the Broadcasting Yearbook of 1973 as "Good Music."  It was actually Beautiful Music and it was boring. They stuck to that into the early 1980s.

That old WDBO frequency, 92.3 presently belongs to WWKA. Both are still owned by Cox, hypothetically they could have restored the original 1950s-flavor MOR simulcast. But with a 5.8 share they won't be messing with WWKA's 20-year country music winning streak any time soon.  But interestingly that first segue to country didn't go over so well. Katz bought the station in 1982, and wanted to drop Beautiful Music. It might have been a stunt, but three announcers took the station "hostage."  On December 21st, Dutch Schaffer, Ron Kocher and Lon Wagner locked themselves in the station for three hours in protest of the format change from Beautiful Music to country.

Whether it was real or stunt, at least it made the newspaper.  I tend to favor the latter just because Morton Downey Jr. was the mediator. I'll quote the Orlando Sentinel via CFLradio.net

"...About 6:15 p.m., announcers Gary "Dutch" Schaffer, 41, and Ron Kocher, 23, locked themselves in the WDBO-FM control booth and told the radio audience they had taken it over in protest of the change, scheduled for January... Three hours and 20 minutes later, the station management and the announcers, who had been joined by broadcaster Lon Wagner, 33, worked out an agreement..."

Ironically, of all the stations involved in this tale, that's the one that hasn't been sold, moved, flipped, shuffled, simulcasted or sent to the HD graveyard. To quote Thomas "Bert" Lance, If it ain't broke, don't fix it.