Broadcast area Buffalo, New York ERP 47,000 watts Class B Frequency 96.1 MHz Format Adult contemporary music Area Buffalo Slogan Buffalo's Best Variety | First air date 1966 HAAT 154 meters Facility ID 1915 City of license Buffalo Owner Townsquare Media Branding Mix 96 | |
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WMSX is an FM radio station licensed to and broadcasting from Buffalo, New York on 96.1 FM, which has an adult contemporary format with a CHR lean. The station is owned by Townsquare Media and has studios based in the Rand Building downtown; the station's transmitter is located on the roof of the same building.
The station signed on as WBNY-FM in 1966 as a sister station to an AM station on 1400 which also held the WBNY calls (unrelated to today's WBNY, a college radio station at 91.3 FM); it adopted the call letters of WJYE on February 1, 1979. The station's format throughout its history has rarely ranged from light music; it adopted its current AC format in 1988 after years as a beautiful music/easy listening station and only converting as the latter formats severely declined in stature. The station has used the branding "Joy-FM" for years, though with some breaks in between where other branding was used. It also historically carried a Christmas music format from the middle of November to New Year's Day (typically changing formats within hours of rival WTSS).
In 1995, WJYE abandoned the "Joy 96" branding and began identifying by its call sign WJYE. It returned to the Joy 96 branding in the late 2000s.
Lance Diamond was the station's Saturday evening host for much of the 1990s and 2000s. The station began to stream over the Internet in November 2006.
Starting in 2007, the station transitioned from its previous soft rock format to a more adult contemporary sound. In recent times, the station has added limited rhythmic songs to their playlist that would be appropriate for their format, but they are mainly rare on the WJYE playlist. It is one of three AC stations in the Buffalo radio market, one being WTSS, along with CHRE-FM in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, though those two are more Hot AC.
On September 2, 2014, WJYE changed its call letters to WMSX, and changed its on-air branding to Mix 96. The format itself did not change from that of recent years (with the exception that it did not flip to Christmas music that winter). The nationally syndicated Delilah, which aired on 96.1 for nearly two decades, moved to WECK in January 2016.