The station began in 1968 as an FM sister to station WRBC-AM and was owned by the Rebel Broadcasting Company. Most of the disc jockeys who were on WRBC took shifts on the FM station, and hosting a shift on the FM station was used to test new talent for WRBC.
Among the more famous voices to be heard on WJMI were Bob Pittman (founder of MTV), Walt Grayson (later a television weatherperson for two Jackson television stations), and Mary Lewis.
The station then broadcast from 7:00 a.m. until midnight. It was affiliated with the ABC-FM news network and broadcast the news each hour at fifteen minutes past the hour with local news following.
The station began as an easy listening station with some of the talent later recalling that every version of "Spanish Eyes" was played on the station. By the 1970s, though, the station had evolved into an adult contemporary station which played album-cuts from such singer-songwriters as Carole King, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, and Helen Reddy, bubblegum mu