Anti-duopoly rules led Shepard to move WAAB to Worcester in 1942, shortly before his sale of the Yankee Network and its stations to General Tire & Rubber.

A separate sports format was launched in 1994 as WWTM, but the 1996 sale of the station to American Radio Systems (ARS) led to the addition of programming from WEEI (850 AM).

The inaugural broadcast was plagued by severe technical problems, leading to a front-page apology on the next day's paper, and the station went off-the-air until April 20, when WBET moved to 760 kHz and began operating from studios originally used by WGI.

[7] WLEX became an affiliate of the Yankee Network on January 20, 1931, and soon thereafter the station moved back to Boston, changing its call letters to WAAB and sharing studios with WNAC (now WBIX) at the Hotel Buckminster at Kenmore Square; by April 20, John Shepard III of Shepard Stores, owner of WNAC and the Yankee Network, had acquired WAAB outright.

[8] Shepard had shown interest in the WLEX license as early as the fall of 1929, when he attempted to lease the station and relocate it to Worcester; this plan was rejected by the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) following objections from WTAG.

[7][11] Though this gave Shepard his long-desired Worcester station,[11] the move was soon followed by the sale of the Yankee Network to General Tire & Rubber.

[14] A year later, Bruff W. Olin, Jr., who previously owned WQUA in Moline, Illinois, bought WAAB for $100,000, with $85,000 being paid to the Yankee Network and Radio Enterprises receiving $15,000.

In 1965, the "Fun-in-the-Sun Guys" were Bill Garcia, Chuck Spencer, Don Stevens and Bob Carrigan[18][19] Morning man Steven Capen recalls the station then and how Atlantic Records purchased it and changed things around in 1967: I was doing the morning show at WAAB in Worcester, my very first stint in rock & roll radio and in a metropolitan market.

Atlantic Records bought the station, and you'd think that would be a good thing, but in came the consultants from New York and Washington, the air sound was tightened beyond belief, catchy new jingles added, and it wasn't long before their newly-installed PD, Sebastian Tripp, gave me my walking papers.

A local sports talk show, Sportsbeat, was added in the evening with former Boston Bruins TV voice, Don Earle.

In the fall of 1971, WAAB replaced the Don Earle show with an ambitious nightly news block to 7:00 pm, anchored by Ron Parshley and Mike Cabral.

Talk show hosts included WSB's Bob Coxe, Kurt Oden (who was an aide to Buddy Cianci), Paul Stanford (now running a gift shop in Naples), Bob Morgan on Sports, Ron Parshley, Alan Michael Rowey, Skip Quillia with Tests and Trivia, Dick Steven's Feminine Forum, Jeff Katz, John Gallager (formerly of Westwood Family Dental and East/West Mortgage), Steve Booth (daytime talk show producer), Mike Marcy, Dave Houle (evening talk show producer and later WFTQ p/t announcer), and Mike Moore (sales guru at WAAF).

[33] Over the summer of 1991, General Manager John Sutherland cited 18 months of "substantial losses" due to poor advertising sales.

[34] On September 3, 1991, WFTQ changed its call letters to WVEI and began simulcasting WEEI, a sports-talk station at that time broadcasting at 590 kHz.

[10] At the time, station chief engineer Eric Fitch wrote, "We have just recently changed our call sign from WVEI to WWTM, effective October 1, 1994.

[39] WWTM discontinued most of its remaining independent programming in favor of WEEI's in late 2000 and the station was reverted to the WVEI call letters on August 8, 2000.