It airs a sports radio format and is owned by Audacy, Inc. Its studios and offices are located in the nearby suburb of Southfield.

The transmitter site is off Greenfield Road near Interstate 696 (Walter P. Reuther Freeway) on Southfield's eastern side, co-located with the tower for WDIV-TV.

ET (although the Twitch feed instead plays public domain music during commercial breaks and excludes copyrighted material such as press conference clips).

[14] On October 31, 1940, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) awarded the first fifteen commercial FM station construction permits, including an assignment on 44.5 MHz in Detroit to the Evening News Association,[15] which was issued the call sign W45D.

In 1947, the station settled on its present 97.1 assignment, and the call sign was changed to WWJ-FM, with programming originally simulcasting WWJ.

In November 1981, WWJ-FM changed its call letters to WJOI, which helped it distinguish itself more from its AM all-news sister station.

WJR-FM's change to "Hot Hits" WHYT in September 1982 left WJOI (nicknamed "Joy 97") as Detroit's only beautiful music station.

Thus, in early 1991, the station made some adjustments to its format, dropping the syndication and going to a staff of live announcers and at the same time adding more soft pop and mellow rock vocals to the mix while replacing many of the traditional orchestra-based instrumentals with new-age and smooth jazz cuts.

With the soft AC approach failing to make the station a contender against WNIC and WLTI, WJOI became WYST ("Star 97") on September 2, 1994, and featured a 1970s oldies/classic hits format.

WYST switched its format to active rock, as "97ROCK" (later taking the call letters WKRK-FM and the on-air identifier "97-1 K-Rock" in June of that year).

In October 2005, WKRK added the "Free FM" identifier being used by CBS Radio on many of its hot-talk properties across the country.

Rover continued as the morning show until September 2006, when low ratings led to a switch to the syndicated Opie and Anthony.

On November 20, 2015, it was announced that the Detroit Lions would move to WJR beginning in the 2016 NFL season, ending the team's 20-year relationship with CBS Radio.

Officials stated that CBS had dropped the Lions over demands that it censor on-air content that was critical of the team.

In April 2017, Terry Foster retired from afternoon drive co-hosting duties with Mike Valenti after a brief return.

[32][33] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Entercom laid off numerous personalities at the station such as Dennis Fithian, Ryan Wooley, and Kyle Bogenschutz.