[8] The station's target audience was upper middle-class and wealthy New Yorkers, as evidenced by its format of classical music and adult standards which competed with WQXR.

[9] The station was purchased by New York Post publisher Dorothy Schiff in 1944 and regularly ran news updates from the paper's newsroom several times during the day.

During the mid-to-late 1950s, its airstaff included pioneering black disc jockey Hal Jackson, actor William Marshall, and Victor Bozeman, who would later become a Los Angeles-based staff announcer for NBC television.

[12] Journalists Bill McCreary,[13] and Gil Noble also got their start in WLIB's news department, before each made the leap to television in the mid-1960s.

[16][17] The station's first talk shows featured Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, and Dr. Carlos Russell, a noted former college professor who taught some of the black and Latino students who later founded the Young Lords.

After becoming black-owned, the station broadcast political, Afrocentric, and health-centered programming aimed at New York's Caribbean American community.

WLIB's advocacy strength was credited with getting out the vote for David Dinkins in 1989 as he ran to become New York City's first black mayor.

The change was controversial, with many in the community seeing the switch as replacing local black activist programming with Air America's national, primarily white, liberal on-air personalities.

The network was heard most of the day over WLIB with the exception of overnights, when the station aired the Global Black Experience, hosted by Imhotep Gary Byrd.

It was rumored that the progressive talk format would be retained on WLIB using local hosts and syndicated talker Ed Schultz, under a lease agreement with Randy Michaels' company, Radioactive, LLC.

The stations were acquired by YMF Media LLC, owned jointly by investor Ronald Burkle and former professional basketball player Earvin "Magic" Johnson.

[21] Emmis began operating the stations under a local marketing agreement (LMA) until receiving final approval from the FCC, which came on June 10, 2014.

On January 10, 2025, the station flipped to a simulcast of the new Spanish-language La Exitosa format adopted by FM sister WEPN-FM, which carries a gold-based mix of Latin pop and English-language adult contemporary hits, with programming and imaging conducted in Spanish.