WJPZ was founded by a group of Syracuse University students including Craig Fox and Bill Blyley in late 1972. The unlicenced station initially broadcast with a power of one-tenth of a watt, and played Top 40 hits at 1200 AM. The makeshift studio was located in the attic of a building at 100 Waverly Avenue, which housed a campus record store. According to one story, the WJPZ call letters were chosen because the students liked the call letter rhyme scheme for WABC in New York City, while Bill Blyley has maintained that the letters were chosen at random.
