Rhode Island's NPR - History

History

In the 1990s, a group of Rhode Islanders formed the Foundation for Ocean State Public Radio in order to bring a local public radio station to the state. At the time, Rhode Island was the only state in New England (traditionally one of the bedrocks of support for NPR) and one of only two in the entire country (the other being Delaware) that did not have a full-service NPR station within its borders. Most of the state got at least a grade B signal from Boston's WGBH-FM (with Providence itself receiving a city-grade signal) and WBUR. After a few years of looking, they found a partner in Boston University, owner of WBUR. BU agreed to buy WRCP (1290 AM), a 5,000-watt station that had been on the air since 1947, for $1.9 million; the foundation conducted a statewide drive to help raise the funds. For many years, 1290 AM had been known as WICE, but switched to Portuguese programming as WRCP in 1983.

On May 1, 1998; WRCP's calls officially changed to WRNI, and the license was officially transferred to the WRNI Foundation, a separate fundraising group set up by WBUR to handle local underwriting.

Even though BU doubled WRNI's transmission power to 10,000 watts, its signal was not strong enough to reach the southern and western portion of the state (though it provides a city-grade signal to Newport, southern Rhode Island's biggest city). Accordingly, in 1999, BU bought WERI (1230 AM) in Westerly, which had been on the air since 1949. BU changed WERI's calls to WXNI, and made it a full-time satellite of WRNI. The station brought a city-grade NPR signal to southern Rhode Island for the first time ever.

BU and WBUR had very big plans for WRNI at first. It moved WRNI from its longtime studio on Douglas Avenue to a state-of-the-art facility at Union Station. It also started a daily two-hour local news magazine, One Union Station. It also had plans to set up a third station to fill the gaps in WXNI's 1,000-watt signal. However, budget problems brought on by the September 11, 2001 attacks forced One Union Station's cancellation. It was replaced with a one-hour news magazine that was canceled in 2004. At that point, WRNI's local operations were significantly cut back, with most of the station's staff either laid off or transferred to Boston. Since then, WRNI's schedule has been almost identical to that of WBUR.