WCJW began its test broadcasts on May 16, 1973, officially broadcasting on May 21. It was a
daytimer under the ownership of broadcast engineer John Weeks, who had spent much of his career on the engineering staff of
WJR in
Detroit. Weeks envisioned a family-oriented operation, with his wife Catherine and daughters Carolyn and Jill filling early staff positions at the station. WCJW's original music format took an
easy listening /
MOR approach, later dubbed "The Heart of
Western New York". Upon Weeks' retirement in September 1984, the station was purchased by Warsaw resident Lloyd Lane and a group of local investors. A format change to country music in 1986 brought increased support from listeners in this rural region of
upstate New York with a local economy based primarily on
dairy farming. In 1996, The station was awarded a New York State Broadcasters Association award for best small market play-by-play for high school football by Seth Fenton and Tom LaDelfa. At the time, due to its daytime only status, WCJW pre-recorded Friday night games to air on Saturday morning, and broadcast live daylight games in the afternoon. In 1999, the station's nominal power was raised to 2,500 watts, and in 2014 the power was increased again to 8,000 watts. Prior to adding the FM translators in 2008, WCJW was a daytime-only station. The AM station remains on the air only during the daytime, as it occupies a
clear channel and must vacate the channel at night to allow
WRVA in
Richmond, Virginia to use the frequency. As part of a longstanding
legal fiction, WCJW officially "shared" its studios with
WLKK in
Wethersfield. In reality WLKK never used WCJW's studios, which were leased by
Buffalo-based broadcasters to comply with the FCC's main studio rule, which has since been rescinded. In September 2025, longtime station owner Lloyd Lane sold WCJW to Tom and Desire (sic) Hoyt. In an interesting historical footnote, the call letters WCJW had previously been assigned to an FM station in Cleveland, OH on the frequency of 104.1 from 1968 to 1971. That station had also switched to a country music format during the use of these call letters. In 1971 the station was sold and became WQAL. ==Awards==