WZAD's programming was a simulcast of sister station 94.3 WKXP in Kingston, an arrangement that began in March 2006 and ended in February 2020.

WZAD first signed on in 1990 as part of a wave of new FM stations in the wake of the FCC's passage of Docket 80-90 which loosened class/frequency restrictions.

The station began its life as The Wizard a locally based open-format station allowing DJs to choose their own music, featuring everything from contemporary folk and rock to jazz and country, with an evening talk segment and new age, world and classical music on weekends.

The station was sold in the early 1990s and immediately fired all its on-air staff and changed to a satellite-based oldies format that had a playlist spanning from the birth of rock until the mid-1980s.

By 2005, the WZAD end of the simulcast was losing local listenership and advertising to locally-based WVOS-FM and its adult contemporary format.

[4] On January 3, 2020, sister station Now 97.7 WCZX out of Hyde Park dropped its hot AC format and announced that it would become part of The Wolf simulcast to make a trimulcast to do competition with 107.3/99.3 WRWD-FM (Highland/Poughkeepsie)/WRWB-FM (Ellenville/Eastern Catskills).