still directional to protect other stations, such as CFRB in Toronto (itself a Class A station), the signal no longer has to protect Little Rock. Despite having been owned by CBS, WINS maintained an affiliation with ABC News Radio throughout, as WCBS was and remains the CBS Radio News affiliate for New York. WINS added a secondary affiliation with Westwood One News on January 1, 2015, after Westwood One ended a distribution deal with ABC News; WINS does not clear newscasts from either service but does air vocal reports and sound bites. On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom (now Audacy, Inc.), which fully separated WINS and WCBS radio from WCBS-TV. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on November 17, 2017. On October 10, 2022, it was announced that Audacy would flip sister station WNYL (92.3 FM) from its alternative format to a simulcast of WINS effective October 27; Audacy also concurrently announced that, after a deal was reached with the SAG-AFTRA union, it was planning on combining the separate staffs and newsrooms of WINS and WCBS. Along with the launch of the simulcast, WINS' simulcast on WNEW-FM's HD3 sub-channel was dropped. Influence CBS was the first broadcaster to make an attempt to mimic Westinghouse's all-news formula. Locally in New York, WINS' success as an all-news station spurred CBS to make a similar transformation with WCBS in August 1967. At first, WCBS did not go full-time with all-news, offering other programming during late nights, but joined WINS in broadcasting all-news around the clock by 1970. After completing the conversion of WCBS to all-news, five of CBS' other owned-and-operated AM stations also adopted the format; WCAU in Philadelphia and KNX in Los Angeles competed directly against KYW and KFWB, but with varying results. In 1975, NBC Radio tried a national all-news approach with its News and Information Service (NIS) network, but it was shut down in 1977 after only two years in operation. In the mid-1970s, Westinghouse's second Chicago station, WIND, carried the format part-time while competing against CBS-owned, all-news WBBM. WIND was not successful, and Westinghouse tried again after selling WIND in 1985 and acquiring WMAQ from NBC in 1988. Westinghouse converted WMAQ into a full-time news outlet with mixed results. In the summer of 2011, New York would gain a third all-news station, this one on the FM dial,