The station signed on in 1966 as WIQT, broadcasting from studios on Hanover Square in Horseheads during daylight hours on 1000 kHz. It was the fifth station to sign on in Chemung County. It was a beautiful music station in its early years. WIQT served as the headquarters of a flood-emergency network during the Hurricane Agnesflood of June 22 and 23, 1972, under the direction of chief engineer C. Michael Scullin and program director David G. Ridenour. It was the only Chemung County station that remained on the during the disaster, which kept all other stations off the air for over a week. Personnel from other stations volunteered to work alongside their WIQT colleagues to broadcast emergency information 24 hours a day, by special dispensation of the FCC to extend their daytime license. A US Army communications command post was set up in their studios, and a CB radio network node as well, for use by civil authorities. Later in 1972, an FMsister stationWQIX went on the air, playing a modern country format. WIQT, owned by Elmiraretailer Manny Panosian, moved down the dial to 820 kHz on January 7, 1988. It also moved into new studios in Downtown Elmira. The relocation had already been scheduled for a later date, but was expedited after the partial collapse of an external wall at the Horseheads location. Its former frequency and studios were picked up by a new Christian radio station, WLNL. Both stations kept Horseheads as their city of license. In Elmira, WIQT played classic country to complement the country format of its sister station. Its slogan "820 American" came about after program director David Rockwell submitted a list of possible slogans to general manager Ron Ferro and Ferro misread "820 AM." Sabre Communications, which owned WCLI and Wink 106, entered into a limited marketing agreement to manage WIQT and WQIX late in 1994. It bought the stations several months later, enabling Sabre to move popular talk shows from WCLI to the more powerful WIQT. Sabre merged with Backyard Broadcasting in 2002. Backyard sold all of its New York assets to Community Broadcasters, LLC effective August 26, 2013, at a price of $3.6 million. Those assets in turn are set to be spun off to Pennsylvania-based broadcaster Seven Mountains Media in January 2019. WIQT changed its call letters to WQIX on January 17, 1996. Its sister station added the -FM suffix. On February 21, 1997, it switched to its current call letters. On January 14, 2020 WWLZ changed their format from talk to a simulcast of classic rock-formatted WMTT 94.7 FM Tioga, Pennsylvania which was in the process of being sold to Seven Mountains Media. It had previously aired a talk radio format that aired the Premiere Networks lineup during the workday and overnight, Cumulus Media Networks programs during the evening and in morning drive, MRNraces and Elmira Jackalshockey. On July 3rd, 2020, WWLZ changed its callsign to WMTT and rebranded as "101 the Met" as part of a 5 station format swap, which made 820/101.3 the main signals for the Met, while adding a simulcast sister station at the former WPGI 100.9.
FM Translator
In addition to the main station broadcasting at 820 kHz, the programming is relayed to FM translators. This information can be seen on this website by moving the pointer to The Met logo.
