UB was one of two public broadcasting organizations active in Western New York at the time, the other being the Western New York Public Broadcasting Association, whose AM, FM and TV stations all carried the call sign WNED and which carried no direct affiliation with any university or government entity. WNED's AM station, AM 970, was an all-spoken word format that duplicated coverage of "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", along with some other spoken-word programming, with WBFO. By 2010, UB had eliminated the daytime and much of the evening music programming as merger discussions with WNED began.