North Carolina Public Radio - History

History

WUNC had originally been on the air for a brief time as an AM station in the 1940s, then returned to the air in 1952 as a student-run FM station with equipment from Jefferson Standard Broadcasting, which had operated WBT-FM for several years. The original station stayed on the air until a lightning strike in 1970.

WUNC signed on in its current incarnation on April 3, 1976. It immediately became the state's second NPR member. One of its earliest shows was Gary Shivers on Jazz, a jazz program produced by the station and syndicated regionally. (Shivers was the station's first program director and second General Manager.) WUNC had studios in Swain Hall on the UNC campus; it moved to a state-of-the-art studio near the Friday Center in 1999. Prior to its switch to its news and information format, the station was a multi-format station of NPR news, classical music and jazz music.

WRQM began as a separate NPR station in the early 1990s with the call letters WESQ, licensed to North Carolina Wesleyan College in Rocky Mount. At one time, this was an African-American public radio station called WVSP and licensed to Warrenton. WESQ offered a variety of music that included country and R & B. The city of Rocky Mount bought the station and operated it with the on-air name "Down East Public Radio." It was renamed WRQM in 1996. The station floundered for most of its existence, as there were just barely enough listeners in that area of the market for the station to be viable on its own. This caused a chronic shortage of financial support even after the city of Rocky Mount bought the station. In March 1999, it began airing portions of WUNC's schedule. It became a full repeater of WUNC that October.

WUND-FM in Manteo signed on March 24, 1999, bringing NPR programming to one of the few areas of North Carolina without access to any NPR programming.