A unit of the UW-Milwaukee College of Letters and Science, the station's studios and offices are on the seventh floor of Chase Tower in Downtown Milwaukee.

It was originally limited to 1,500 watts due to a glut of stations on the lower end of the FM dial in the Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison axis.

[2] That was well before most NPR stations in large cities around the U.S. made a similar move, replacing weekday music shows with spoken-word programming.

In January 2010, WUWM's studios moved from the Shops of Grand Avenue to facilities in the Chase Tower in Downtown Milwaukee.

According to the station's general manager at the time, Dave Edwards (who was also the chairman of the NPR board), the HD2 stream attracted minimal listenership over the air, and only 200 listeners per week online.

With little outside of a small jump in audio quality on the main signal to justify the technology, station officials concluded it was not worth the effort to bring the HD transmitter back online.