The station signed on in December 2003 as WFNA to help improve the signal range of Charlotte's original all-sports station WFNZ, airing some of that station's programming. WFNZ must power down to 1,000 watts at night, rendering it all but unlistenable in some parts of the Charlotte radio market. The station was switched its call sign to WBMX on July 29, 2009. A few weeks later, on August 12, it again switched its call letters to WBCN. The assignment of the WBMX and WBCN call letters came as CBS Radio prepared for a radio station shuffle in Boston. WBCN, Boston's longtime rock station, was set to move to a digital-only platform, while 98.5 WBMX was moving to WBCN's old position at 104.1 FM. This swap was being made to create a new Boston sports radio station at 98.5 FM. On August 5, 2009, Mix 98.5 in Boston switched its call letters from WBMX-FM to WBZ-FM, the call letters of the new sports station. The WBMX call letters were parked in Charlotte, while WBCN aired for its final days. Shortly after midnight on August 12, 2009, WBCN signed off, and the WBCN and WBMX call letters were switched to complete the process. According to The Charlotte Observer, CBS decided to park the WBCN call letters in Charlotte to keep another Boston station from picking them up and trading on the station's 51-year heritage in Boston. Bill Schoening, CBS Radio manager for Charlotte, said, "It's very common in the business. It was a major signal with call letters that still have value and heritage.”
On June 21, 2012, Mark Washburn of The Charlotte Observer reported that starting in 2013, WBCN would be one of the charter affiliates of the new CBS Sports Radio Network, and will carry that network's programming throughout the day. WBCN began airing network programming on January 2, 2013. It also aired any Wake Forest or Davidson basketball games that conflicted with Charlotte Hornets games on WFNZ. On October 2, 2014, CBS Radio announced that it would trade all of its Tampa and Charlotte stations, including WBCN, as well as WIP in Philadelphia to the Beasley Broadcast Group in exchange for five stations located in Miami and Philadelphia. The swap was completed on December 1, 2014. On September 8, 2015, WBCN changed back to conservative talk, branded as "America's Pulse 1660".
Switch to Southern Classic Rock
On June 19, 2017, at 6 a.m., WBCN flipped formats to classic rock, branded as "94.7 Smoke", and began relaying on translator W234BY 94.7 FM. The station aired an original playlist, focused on Southern classic rock artists including Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, The Allman Brothers and Tom Petty, as well as local artists, and some Southern country tracks. It competed with iHeartMedia's longtime Classic Rock outlet WRFX. While WBCN is heard on FM through a 250 watttranslator station, WRFX operated with 84,000 watts.
