[6] The station aired a wide range of student-produced programming including music, news, sports, radio dramas, and debates.

[12] Throughout the late 1950s, students and faculty involved with WAMU-AM pushed to create an FM station that could reach beyond campus and serve Washington, D.C., as a whole.

With the launch of its FM service in 1961, WAMU joined the nascent National Educational Radio Network, a predecessor to NPR.

[15][16] In 1967, WAMU-FM began programming bluegrass music which, in its heyday on the main channel, included the Lee Michael Demsey Show and the Ray Davis Show and weekends included Stained Glass Bluegrass and West Virginia Public Radio's Mountain Stage.

[22] On May 7, 2004, WAMU-FM began digital broadcasting using the HD Radio standard and launched the Americana-music station Bluegrass Country on its HD2 subchannel.

[22][24][25] Also in 2004, the prominent Washington journalist Ellen Wadley Roper left WAMU a $250,000 bequest, the largest gift in the station's history.

[41] Prior to the station's move to Connecticut Avenue, WAMU operated for about two decades from two floors of an office building in Tenleytown near the AU campus that at one point housed the East German embassy.

The station's weekday schedule is largely made up of NPR staples Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Here and Now, The Takeaway, and Fresh Air.

Amid listener protests, WAMU management stated at that time that music was increasingly becoming out of place on the station's schedule, and cited listener surveys showing a desire for more news programming on weekends; after this change, a delayed broadcast of Live from Here was the only remaining music program on WAMU's schedule.

[48] In July 2016, WAMU announced it would shut down Bluegrass Country for financial reasons that December 31, unless it could find a buyer for the station and access to its HD2 channel.

[50][51] Bluegrass Country also aired on FM via independently owned translator W288BS (105.5 MHz) from Reston, Virginia, until June 2017, when the owner elected not to renew his contract with the channel and replaced it with Radio Sputnik.

From summer 2010 to June 2021, WAMU operated a 50,000-watt Class B Eastern Shore relay service on WRAU 88.3 MHz licensed to Ocean City, Maryland, with its transmission facilities in Whaleyville.

WRAU carried local content, such as news, traffic, and weather, along with simulcasts of WAMU's main channel programming.

[55] In February 2020, WAMU reached an agreement with Delaware Public Media for the sale of WRAU;[56] however, the broadcasters unwound the deal in October 2020, citing economic changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[55] In March 2021, WAMU announced the sale of the station to Atlantic Gateway Communications, owner of Takoma Park, Maryland-based WGTS.

[59] From 2014 to 2017, WAMU operated a second repeater, the 8,000-watt Class B1 WYAU on 89.5 MHz licensed to Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, serving the Fredericksburg area.

WVAU began testing operation on 101.7 MHz in 1985, using a series of experimental low-power FM transmitters designed to limit reception to residence halls.