By the mid 1970's, WSUS was doing the town and country format during the day. The station was exactly half and half. But the non country songs were mostly current hits and drawn from the top 30 from Billboard's Hot 100. Very few non current songs were played in the realm of non country. The Country songs were a mix of then current product and past Country hits from about the past 15 years. After 8 PM, WSUS leaned rock. 2/3 of their music was pop rock hits from what was the past 10 to 15 years and 1/3 was then current Top 40 product.
WSUS always was news intensive during the day and less so after 8 PM. They also had a couple specialty shows on the weekend. I recall that they had a Polka music show from 10 AM to Noon Sundays. Then in 1982, WSUS dropped the town and country format during the day as well as the rock leaning Top 40 format at night and passively segued to more of an adult contemporary format. They eliminated virtually all the harder rock songs and at one point did not even play "Abricadabra/Steve Miller Band" or "Dont You Want Me/Human League" or "Eye Of The Tiger/Survivor". During the mid summer of 1982, however, they bagan playing those songs at night only. At that point they did not bring back their Rock format at night but were a bit more uptempo at night than during the day. They were about 1/3 current and 2/3 songs from what was the past 10 years or so. They leaned towards artists like Elton John, Carly Simon, Kenny Rogers, Diana Ross, Eagles, James Taylor, Barbara Streisand, among many others.
By 1983, WSUS evolved to more of a Hot Adult Contemporary format. During the day they seemed more straight ahead AC while at night they sounded more Top 40 minus the few hard rock songs that were charting. WSUS remained like this throughout the 1980's and into the 1990's. They also played a moderate amount of 60's music by the late 1980's.
In February of 1998, Nassau took control of WSUS and moved the late great Vince "Thomas" over as program director. At that point, WSUS had moved to a straight ahead Adult COntemporary format full-time and became tighter in music selection. They took the syndicated Delilah Show evenings. They also revamped their jingles and dropped the saying "Dependable WSUS". The Polka Show had been gone a few years before at least. They remained News Intensive and their new liner was "The Best Variety Of Soft Rock".
Under a corporate deal, Clear Channel Communications acquired WSUS in 2001. WSUS basically remained the same. In fact, its the only station in the Clear Channel Sussex cluster that has not been overhauled since their acquisition. The majority of the WSUS staff under Nassau is still there under Clear Channel. WNNJ-FM evolved from Classic Rock leaning Classic Hits to a hard rock leaning classic rock format. None of the Nassau staff is still there. WHCY had dropped COuntry for Top 40 under Nassau.
Under Clear Channel, WHCY laid off staff, dropped their most popular show witH Chaz and Joanne, moved to a Rhythmic leaning format in 2003 only to move to more of a Rock/Hot AC lean in 2004. The people on their skeleton staff came and went. Then in the summer of 2008, the station dropped its mostly in house automated format in favor of a Satellite Hot AC format from a competing satellite service.
WNNJ 1360 would drop the satellite easy listening vocal based format to try Country in the Fall of 2002, then Oldies from 1955 to 1975 in the fall of 2004. That format was live in mornings and afteroons and two weekend shifts but automated in house the rest of the time. That lasted until Summer of 2007, when the station went jockless full time for a month and then to an Oldies/Easy Listening hybrid satellite format called "Timeless Favorites" at the end of August. This format lasted a mere 10 months and now they are known as WTOC and are back to oldies through a competitor's satellite service called "True Oldies Channel" with Scott Shannon. That focuses on music from 1964 to 1979 with limited pre 64 and post 79 product.
So WSUS has been the most stable station of the bunch.
