Owned by Isothermal Community College, the station broadcasts a varied format including Americana, folk, blues, jazz, reggae, Celtic, world, rock, bluegrass, indie, and National Public Radio News.

The station's broadcast area covers most of western North Carolina from a tower on Clingman's Peak near Mount Mitchell.

[7] On October 13, 1989, WNCW signed on from a tower on Clingman's Peak near Mount Mitchell at 6 a.m. with Morning Edition, starting with the theme music from B.J.

[1] The earliest description of WNCW's original programming said that the station's weekday program was Crossroads, featuring a broad range of music genres, similar to today; in the evenings, listeners could hear classic radio dramas like The Lone Ranger and Sherlock Holmes followed by classical music.

For the station's 20th anniversary, more than 1000 listeners voted for WNCW's Top Artists - Bob Dylan was voted #1, followed by The Avett Brothers, Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia, Alison Krauss, Johnny Cash, Acoustic Syndicate, The Beatles, Doc Watson, Neil Young, and The Allman Brothers Band.

WNCW's 25th annual end-of-year Top 100 contest, in which listeners and programmers vote for their ten favorite album releases of the year, was conducted in 2014.

The #1 pick was Sturgill Simpson's "Metamodern Sounds in Country Music", followed by that year's albums from Balsam Range, Lake Street Dive, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Shovels & Rope.