WCYK-FM

The station signed on the air on August 1, 1984 (1984-08-01).[3] Its original call sign was WANV-FM and it had a soft adult contemporary format. The station was co-owned by M. Robert "Bob" Rogers' High Fidelity Music Show, Inc. WANV-FM served as a sister station to country WANV 970 AM in Waynesboro.[4] Bob Rogers was the former manager of WGMS in Washington, D.C. With his wife Terry, he ran a series of annual High Fidelity Music Show expos to showcase the latest in home audio technology.[5] The station initially transmitted from Elliott Knob west of Staunton, high enough to cover the Staunton-Waynesboro-Harrisonburg portion of the Shenandoah Valley.[6]

In 1989, WANV-FM received a construction permit to move to Bear Den Mountain, just east of Waynesboro and north of Afton Mountain. Although this site is roughly 1,500 feet lower than Elliott Knob, it affords a much wider coverage area, with local-grade service to the Charlottesville metro in addition to the valley to the west.[6] The station flipped to oldies during 1991.[7]

Bob Rogers died in 1992, and the two stations passed to his son as executor, who began looking for a buyer.[6] In March 1994, Michael Douglass' Clark Broadcasting Company bought WANV-FM along with longtime Charlottesville country stations WCYK (810 kHz) and WCYK-FM (102.3 MHz), based in Crozet.[8] Clark changed the call sign to WVAO-FM and, at first, kept the oldies format.

To take advantage of the 99.7 MHz facility's superior signal, Clark then moved the more popular country format and WCYK-FM call letters from 102.3 in February 1996. That station took the oldies and WVAO-FM call sign in return.[9]

Clear Channel entered the Charlottesville market by buying Clark's three FM stations in 1998. The company ran the station as "Country 99.7", but otherwise did not make changes.[10]

Clear Channel exited the Charlottesville market in June 2007 by selling all of its stations to George Reed's Sistema 102 LLC, which was later renamed Monticello Media.[11] On November 3, 2007, Monticello tweaked the station's branding to "Your Country 99.7". On the morning of September 16, 2010, the station adopted the "Hitkicker 99-7" brand, which came with changes to airstaff but not music.[12]

Exactly seven years later, on September 16, 2017, the station shifted brands again to "99.7 CYK", at the same time adding some recurrents to a music rotation that was largely hit-based. This occurred as a result of increased competition from WCVL-FM (92.7 MHz), which airs a 1990-based country format, and a format change at Monticello's own classic country outlet WKAV.[13]