That same year, effective January 15, it adopted its present call sign, named after Hearst's International News Service.

[10] Sportscaster Mel Allen was an early disc jockey on the station, hosting an afternoon popular music program beginning in 1947.

In 1962, WMGM adopted a beautiful music format under its previous call letters, WHN, while WINS was purchased by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation.

[18][19] WINS immediately established a template for its format with an easily identifiable, distinctive teletype sound in the background, which for many years was from a live microphone behind their bank of newswire machines.

[19] Tijuana, Mexico-based border blaster XETRA had programmed an English-language all-news format for the Los Angeles radio market, as had Chicago station WNUS and, previously WAVA AM and FM in the Washington, D.C.

Westinghouse made similar format changes at two other stations: KYW in Philadelphia, in September 1965;[21] and KFWB in Los Angeles, in March 1968.

[22] Together, WINS, KFWB and KYW served as prototype all-news stations, and all three succeeded in attracting both listeners and advertising revenue over the years.

[citation needed] WINS's signal was also improved in 1995 after the company bought KSYG in Little Rock, Arkansas, which had also broadcast on the same frequency, and took it off the air.

Locally in New York, WINS' success as an all-news station spurred CBS to make a similar transformation with WCBS in August 1967.

[29] After completing the conversion of WCBS to all-news, five of CBS' other owned-and-operated AM stations also adopted the format; WCAU in Philadelphia and KNX in Los Angeles competed directly against KYW and KFWB, but with varying results.

In 1975, NBC Radio tried a national all-news approach with its News and Information Service (NIS) network, but it was shut down in 1977 after only two years in operation.

[citation needed] Later in 2012, Merlin Media, LLC sold the frequency to CBS Radio, which turned it into an FM simulcast of WFAN, making it a sister station to both WINS and WCBS.

[citation needed] As of 2024[update], Audacy operates six all-news stations around the U.S., including WINS, WBBM, KNX, KYW, KCBS in San Francisco, and WWJ in Detroit.