[3] The application competed against a bid from Manlius Broadcasting Co., which was owned by Craig Fox and Ted Utz, along with a small group of investors.

[3] Construction immediately ensued on studios in the Market Place complex on Route 92,[5] including Fox and Utz doing much of the construction Fox as chief engineer,[6] and with an album-oriented rock (AOR) format, WAQX began broadcasting on August 23, 1978.

[7] Fox, then 25, Utz then 24 and two friends of his from Syracuse University felt that Syracuse could support a commercial AOR station; until then, WAER at the university and WOUR in nearby Utica were the only AOR stations serving the market.

[9] In 1988, after an upgrade in the station's transmitting facility and power prompted it to relocate from 95.3 to 95.7 MHz,[10] Kimble and Fox negotiated the sale of the station to Atlantic Ventures Corporation, a Massachusetts company formed by former executives of the recently sold American Cablesystems, for $4.5 million.

[13] However, Atlantic soon unloaded WAQX, selling it at a $500,000 loss to Pilot Communications in 1990 to focus on its stations in Rochester and Boston.