WHPT

WHPT (currently known as "102.5 The Bone") is a Cox Radio station located in the Sarasota, Tampa Bay, and St. Petersburg Florida areas, but can be heard as far south as Fort Myers and Naples, from its transmitter near SR 70, near the northeastern corner of Sarasota County. While the station's license and transmitter is based within the Sarasota radio market, its studios are based in St. Petersburg with the other Cox stations, and focuses on the Tampa Bay radio market.

WHPT is a Hot Talk format; its HD2 subchannel plays classic rock from the 1960s and 1970s, branded as "Trippin' 102.5 HD2".

History

The station signed on the air in 1960 as WYAK. In 1967, the callsign was changed to WSAF-FM.

In 1973, the Sarasota Radio Company purchased WSAF and changed its format to the beautiful music format and its callsign to WQSR. Its new call letters reflected company president, Edward Rogers', philosophy: QSR: Quality Stereo Radio. After a somewhat schizophrenic existence for several years, playing Beautiful Music from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Album Oriented Rock from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., the station finally pulled the plug on the daytime format when ratings and advertising sales clearly indicated the community's preference for rock and roll . During part of this period, the station added quadraphonic sound, and promoted itself as "Quad One-Oh-Two-And-A-Half". The free-form music format would eventually suffer challenges from other formats that eroded its Arbitron ratings in the critical 25-34 and 25-54 demographics.