[7] During the 1960s, the station hosted numerous anti-establishment causes, including anti-Vietnam war activists, feminists (and live coverage of purported bra-burning demonstrations), kids lib, early Firesign Theater comedy, and complete-album music overnight.

[citation needed] The 1964 Political conventions were "covered" satirically on WBAI by Severn Darden, Elaine May, Burns and Schreiber, David Amram, Julie Harris, Taylor Mead, and members of The Second City improvisational group.

[citation needed] Interviews with prominent figures in literature and the arts, as well as original dramatic productions and radio adaptations were also regular program offerings.

[citation needed] In 1970, Kathy Dobkin, Milton Hoffman, and Francie Camper produced an unprecedented, critically acclaimed 41⁄2 day round-the-clock reading of Tolstoy's War And Peace.

In a 1978 milestone in the station's contentious and unruly history, WBAI lost a 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision (FCC v. Pacifica Foundation) that to this day has defined the power of the government over broadcast material it calls indecent.

[12][13] Thus the station, already at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, the counterculture and anti-war protest, under Ruas also became a platform for New York's avant-garde in theater, music, performance, art, and poetry.

[21] The series consisted of four programs, beginning with Junkie and followed by The Yage Letters, read by Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, and, finally, Naked Lunch.

Bill Kortum oversaw this series as well as retrospectives of the works of Jerzy Kosinski and Donald Barthelme, co-produced with Judith Sherman, the station's music director.

[26][27] Ruas inaugurated the Audio Experimental Theater, a series presenting the works of avant-garde artists: Meredith Monk, Yvonne Rainer, Ed Bowes, Ed Friedman,[28] Michael Newman with Joan Schwartz and Benjamin Folkman,[29] Vito Acconci, Charles Ludlum, Jacques Levy, Willoughby Sharp, John Cage, Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, Richard Foreman, and Joan Jonas.

[30][22] In drama, the station defended Tennessee Williams against his critics during the last years of his life by covering his Memoirs and broadcasting a production of Two-Character Play.

[22] Ruas initiated interview programs featuring nonfiction writers discussing their fields of expertise—Buckminster Fuller, Thor Heyerdahl, Ed Sanders, Jonathan Kozol and Nigel Nicholson.

[35] The visual arts critics were John Perreault, Cindy Nemser, Liza Baer, Joe Giordano, Judith Vivell,[36] Kenneth Koch, and Les Levine.

Merwin, Maureen Owen, Charles Reznikoff, Rebecca Wright, Ron Padgett, Carter Ratcliff, John Hollander, Anne Waldman, Helen Adam, Audre Lorde, Michael Brownstein, Mary Ferrari, and Muriel Rukeyser.

[38] On alternate weeks, Oppenheimer presented the works of Barbara Holland, Ivan Arguelles, Ann Darr, Richard Howard, Karen Swenson, James Emanuel, Siv Cedering Fox, Nelson Canton, Victoria Sullivan, Samuel Menashe, Carol Hebald, Paul Zweig, Gregor Roy and Mary Jane Menuez.

He oversaw Meredith Monk's performance of Quarry,[42] as well as producing Broadway actress Marian Seldes in Portrait of an Unknown Lady: Eleanor Wylie.

Utrice Leid, a popular Caribbean radio host and producer had expected to succeed Marksman but was denied the post by then-general manager Valerie Van Isler.

The culmination of this conflict was the "Christmas Coup" in December 2000 when a faction, led by Leid, padlocked the station and took control of the airwaves, starting an on-air and off-air war that lasted for several years.

The autocratic and unpopular Van Isler also vigorously fought former staffers from obtaining unemployment benefits, including Bill Wells, the former WBAI Chief Engineer, who had a disability.

[50][49] Lynne Rosen and John Littig, co-hosts of the monthly show The Pursuit of Happiness, were found dead on June 3, 2013, after committing suicide in their Park Slope home.

[51] In June 2013, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting suspended payments to WBAI, citing accounting irregularities and a failure by the station to meet its financial obligations.

[55] Summer Reese, the interim executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, said that after talks with SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents broadcasting talent, "we will be laying off virtually everyone whose voice you recognize on the air," effective Monday.

In March 2014, there were assorted rumors that the station would be sold or leased or moved, in whole or in part (including their equipment and antenna at the Empire State Building),[57] after contentions and firings both at WBAI and at Pacifica headquarters.

[59] On October 4, 2017, the court rejected WBAI's pleadings as ill-founded and granted the Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) a summary judgment, in the amount of $1.8m plus attorney's fees, for the monies due through the initial filing date of late 2016.

WBAI began airing a national network feed known as "Pacifica Across America" - a curated collection of original content produced by Pacifica stations KPFA in Berkeley, California, KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in Houston and WPFW in Washington, D.C., among other sources (the post-shutdown WBAI schedule included commercial progressive talker Thom Hartmann and Native American free-form series Undercurrents, which is mostly syndicated to public radio).

[68] On Tuesday, October 15, 2019, WBAI's attorney, Arthur Schwartz, stated that Federal Judge Paul A. Engelmayer reactivated the temporary restraining order (TRO), extending it to close of business on the 17th.