The station's studios are in the combined Audacy facility in the Hudson Square neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, and its transmitter is located at the Empire State Building.

[4] On November 1, 1943, the callsign was changed to WABC-FM[5] for Atlantic Broadcasting Company, the former owner of CBS's AM station (no relation to the present-day WABC).

From the 1940s until the late 1950s, both stations aired a typical network-dominated general entertainment format with comedies, dramas, news and information, sports, talk shows and some music.

As these types of radio shows either moved to television or were canceled outright, WCBS and WCBS-FM evolved toward a personality-oriented format featuring news and information, popular music, and sports.

WCBS-FM initially programmed a younger-leaning easy listening format known as "The Young Sound", playing soft instrumental versions of current pop music songs.

[7] On August 27, 1967, the AM station had to launch its news format (which was not full-time until 1972) on WCBS-FM because a small airplane had crashed into the AM radio tower a few hours earlier.

Radio personalities such as Bobby "Wizzard" Wayne, Tom Tyler, Ed Williams, Steve Clark, Roby Yonge, K.O.

For New Years weekend in 1999–2000, the station compiled and played a Top 1001 countdown based on original New York radio charts, with "Mack The Knife" by Bobby Darin at number one.

Joe McCoy took over as program director in 1981, and at that point WCBS-FM began to gradually shift its focus to the 1964–1969 era, but would also feature more pre-1964 oldies than most other such stations of that decade.

Also in the 1980s, after WABC and later WNBC abandoned music in favor of talk, WCBS-FM began employing many disc jockeys who were widely known on other New York City stations (and sometimes nationally), most notably Musicradio 77 WABC alumni Ron Lundy, Dan Ingram, Bruce "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, and Harry Harrison, as well as former WMCA "Good Guys" Dan Daniel and Jack Spector.

Bob Shannon, whose only previous New York City radio experience before coming to WCBS-FM was as a fill-in DJ at WYNY, became well-known himself through his 19-year run as the station's afternoon disk jockey.

The station's ratings increased during the 1990s (and were sustained into the 2000s) and market research studies showed a small and growing audience in the 35-to-49-year-old demographic as a new generation's "songs they grew up with" moved into the oldies format.

[citation needed] By 2000, as demographics for 1950s and early 1960s oldies started to eclipse the target age groups that many advertisers covet,[13] WCBS-FM began cutting pre-1964 songs while adding more music from the 1970s and 1980s.

In the summer of 2003, to appease some fans, they did add a specialty 1955–1964 oldies show called Heart & Soul of Rock & Roll with Norm N. Nite (who had been with WCBS off and on since 1973).

WCBS-FM's last morning show host of this period was ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz, who had appeal to this audience segment by virtue of 1970s reruns of his band's eponymous television series and the mid-1980s Monkees revival.

That April, Infinity flipped radio stations KCBS-FM in Los Angeles and WQSR in Baltimore to the "Jack FM" format.

On Friday, June 3, 2005, Micky Dolenz, Mike Fitzgerald, and Randy Davis all signed off their shows expecting to be back the following Monday.

Then, at 4:00 pm, the station played the usual station identification, and then a mix of oldies and greatest hits referring to change, including "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)", "Get a Job", "Glory Days" and "Hit the Road Jack" (the last song of which had the word "Jack" edited out, giving an advance hint to the new format),[15] among others.

In an interview with the New York Daily News, Cousin Brucie likened the format switch to "replacing Yankee Stadium with a fruit stand".

Then, after a few seconds of dead air and a few seconds of a "Wayback Machine" audio special effect, the oldies format returned with the resumption of the last song played before the change to Jack FM, Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind" (starting like a phonograph record played very slowly but quickly accelerated to normal speed).

Former Mayor Ed Koch then welcomed back the format, noting the "mistake" CBS Radio had made with the switch.

Then at exactly 1:01 pm, the legally mandated station identification played, and WCBS-FM's classic hits format officially returned with "Do It Again" by the Beach Boys.

WOCL in Orlando used the same sequence (with the montage starting with 1966 and running clips for every year through 1989) the following year, dropping alternative rock for classic hits, and later WJMK in Chicago also used the same sequence (with a few Chicago-themed modifications) on March 14, 2011, when they switched from Jack FM to a classic hits format.

"[18] Mayor Bloomberg, who had criticized the Jack FM format after its debut, also welcomed oldies back with open arms, proclaiming July 12, 2007, as "WCBS-FM Returns to New York City Day".

[19][20] Arbitron's switch from diary to PPM facilitated a move back to oldies and classic hits as sister station WOGL in Philadelphia had demonstrated ratings success in the new methodology by reaching the top five.

WCBS-FM's return to classic hits has also been a success, ranking it among the top five stations in every quarter of the new ratings for Arbitron, consistently either first or second in overall audience.

On July 9, 2017, Backtrax USA, hosted by former WHTZ jock Kid Kelly, debuted on WCBS-FM on Sunday nights.

While CBS shareholders retained a 72% ownership stake in the combined company, Entercom was the surviving entity, separating WCBS radio (both 101.1 FM and 880 AM) from WCBS-TV.

[citation needed] In February 2008, Howard Cogan was replaced by Pat St. John as the pre-recorded voice of the Jack character on WCBS-FM HD2 and ilikejack.com.

During the holiday season in 2008, WCBS-FM's HD1 and analog signal played Christmas music, resulting in the oldies format being temporarily moved back to the HD2 channel.