WYSO started as a student and faculty station with a 10-watt transmitter located at the student union building of Antioch College, an institution with a unique progressive philosophy. By the early 1970s, an intermediate power increase to 3000 watts and the introduction of permanent paid staff began a move towards reflecting and serving a larger community. At that time, WYSO was known as a university-based community radio station. Significantly, several Antioch College students and other volunteers took it upon themselves to be involved with an incipient community and public radio movement in the United States. Several of those individuals have occupied key positions since that time—out of proportion to the station's modest size. Before NPR affiliation, nearly all of the station's programming was locally originated. The station had carried live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts, ad hoc networks set up by anti-Vietnam War activists, and a few recorded syndicated programs. "WYSO People's News" a local news program, was aired in the 1970s and 1980s. The rest of WYSO's program schedule was eclectic and block programming. As at other community radio stations in the United States, NPR affiliation was viewed with suspicion by some insiders, but the attendant money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting led to a permanent staff and a local fundraising mandate. WYSO became an NPR member station and started broadcasting All Things Considered at the time of the first power increase sometime between 1971 and 1973. The eventual popularity of NPR's news and information programming was not foreseen at the time and there were endless discussions about how the newly energized medium of noncommercial radio would best serve the community. The topic of local versus national origination was an important, but not the only, subject of debate. The decision to replace morning Bluegrass music, local and unique to the region, with network news in the morning was undertaken in the late 1980s. Tom and Jim Duffee and other local bluegrass musicians introduced the genre on WYSO around 1970, and it was embraced by management at the time as a link with the larger Southwest Ohio community. In the spring of 2002, a group of listeners formed "Keep WYSO Local" in response to cutbacks to local programming. The cutbacks included canceling volunteer-hosted shows like "Alternate Takes" and "Women in Music," which started in 1975 and was one of the country's longest running shows dedicated to women producers and musicians. Listener Joseph Lutz commented that the changes "will soon transform WYSO from the quirky, bohemian station enjoyed by a few thousand listeners to a station that many more will turn on and let play as pleasant background sound that in no way disturbs listeners with unpredictable programming." The moves led to widespread protests in the Yellow Springs community as the group continued to debate the future of the station with the University. WYSO became independently owned and operated from Antioch College in 2019, for which the college received $3.5 million as compensation. The station continues in collaboration with the college, such as by working with college students as interns.
Most local programming, as measured by airtime, is produced by volunteers. Volunteers, listeners and donors to the station have asserted an unofficial role in station governance since the 1970s when the station was managed under Antioch's Community Government. The College holds the license and administrators now hire the professional staff. In December 2008, WYSO announced that Neenah Ellis, a public radio producer and host would be the station's next general manager. She and her husband, NPR host and author Noah Adams, would make their home in Yellow Springs.
