In November 1971, owner Max Richmond died and FM radio began to overtake AM stations for music listening. WMEX decided to abandon top-40 hits in 1975. It briefly ran a middle of the road music format with some talk programming. Then WMEX captured the broadcast rights to Boston Red Sox baseball beginning with the 1975 playoffs. That led to WMEX becoming an all-talk station in 1976. In 1978, to better promote its talk format and sports coverage, the station changed call letters to WITS ("We're Information, Talk and Sports").