National Public Radio is an American privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization based in Washington, D.C. NPR differs from other non-profit membership media organizations, such as AP, in that it was established by an act of Congress and most of its member stations are owned by government entities. It serves as a national syndicator to a network of over 1,000 public radio stations in the United States.
There are two types of radio network currently in use around the world: the one-to-many broadcast network commonly used for public information and mass-media entertainment, and the two-way radio type used more commonly for public safety and public services such as police, fire, taxicabs, and delivery services. Cell phones are able to send and receive simultaneously by using two different frequencies at the same time. Many of the same components and much of the same basic technology applies to all three.
Rhode Island, officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest state in area, the seventh least populous, the second most densely populated, and it has the longest official name of any state. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound. It also shares a small maritime border with New York. Providence is the state capital and most populous city in Rhode Island.
In addition to NPR, APM and other public radio programming from national sources, RIPR has dedicated reporters covering specific beats, including Politics, Health Care, Education, the Environment, and Arts & Culture. RIPR also produces local segments including:
Political Roundtable with Ian Donnis, Scott Mackay & Maureen Moakley every Friday.
Made in Rhode Island an ongoing occasional series looking at manufacturing in the state.
One Square Mile an annual special week-long series, taking an in-depth look at one city or town in Rhode Island. Previous OSM series include: Central Falls, Bristol, Woonsocket, West Warwick, Block Island, Narragansett Bay itself, and Newport.
WNPN is a radio station broadcasting an NPR news/talk format. It is the flagship broadcast outlet for The Public's Radio. Its official community of license is Newport, Rhode Island, but from a tall tower in Tiverton, Rhode Island the signal covers most of Rhode Island and the South Coast of Massachusetts. It also has repeater stations WNPE in Narragansett Pier, WELH in Providence and WCVY in Coventry. The network provides the sole local public radio outlet for Rhode Island.
WLNE-TV, virtual channel 6, is an ABC-affiliated television station serving Providence, Rhode Island, United States that is licensed to New Bedford, Massachusetts. The station is owned by Bronxville, New York-based Citadel Communications. WLNE's studios are located in the Orms Building in downtown Providence, and its transmitter is based in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.
Tiverton is a town in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The population was 15,780 at the 2010 census.
Smaller repeater signals provide additional coverage in Providence (WELH), South County (WNPE), and Coventry (WCVY).
WELH is a radio station owned by The Wheeler School of Providence, Rhode Island. Originally signing on in January 1995 with a pop alternative format and a line up of student DJs, WWKX veterans including Kickin Al Snape, a young Robby Bridges and others as "WELH: Taking Music to New Heights". In 1996 the station moved to a modern rock format programmed by student DJs as "Extreme 88", and later jazz and oldies, eventually offering programming from various groups.
WCVY is a local student-run high school radio station in Coventry, Rhode Island that broadcasts on 91.5 FM. The station is owned by Coventry Public Schools of Rhode Island, and broadcasts from Coventry High School. The station broadcasts a combination of adult album alternative (AAA) and modern rock music formats from 2-8 p.m. on school days, with NPR news and talk programming from Rhode Island Public Radio airing at all other times.
Technology
WNPN transmits using a Nautel GV15 transmitter with 10,187 watts transmitter power output (TPO) to make 7,000 watts effective radiated power (ERP). A Shively Labs 6016 four-panel antenna array is used; the antenna is fairly directional, with nulls to avoid prohibited interference to/from WQPH 89.3FM Shirley, Massachusetts to the north-northwest, and to WPKT 89.1FM Norwich, Connecticut to the west-southwest. An Omnia 9 FM/HD processor from The Telos Alliance is used to keep audio levels consistent. The station broadcasts in digital HD Radio although As of August2018[update] no multicast HD2 or HD3 channels are transmitted. A 67kHz subcarrier is transmitted for the Massachusetts Radio Reading ServiceAudible Local Ledger.
Nautel Ltd. is a Canadian manufacturer of AM and FM radio broadcast transmitters, navigational radio beacons, Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) transmitters, NOAA weather radio transmitters, LF PNT/eLORAN transmitters, SONAR high-power low-frequency amplifiers and SONAR systems, medium frequency (MF) telegraph and NAVTEX transmitters, and high frequency (HF) amplifiers for dielectric heating applications. Nautel is best known as the first company to develop a commercially available fully solid state broadcast transmitter.
WQPH is a Catholic radio station, licensed to Shirley, Massachusetts, United States and serving the Fitchburg area. The station is owned by Prayers for Life, Inc., and is an affiliate of EWTN Radio.
Shirley is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately thirty miles west-northwest of Boston. The population was 7,211 at the 2010 census. The town has a well-preserved historic New England town center.
WNPN 89.3FM and WNPE 102.7FM broadcast in HD Radio, simulcasting the analog signal on the HD1 channel. WELH 88.1FM and WCVY 91.5 do not broadcast in HD Radio.
From March 2013 until February 2018, MVYradio leased the HD2 multicast channel of WNPE to broadcast a modified content stream of WMVY 88.7FM on Martha's Vineyard, which could also be heard on W243AI 96.5FM, a lower powered FM translator transmitting from the roof of Newport Hospital.[1] Afterwards, WNPE discontinued the HD2 broadcast, but continued HD Radio operations for its main HD1 channel.
1 WELH airs a student-produced sports/talk show from midnight-3a.m. Friday nights/Saturday mornings, with Rhode Island Public Radio programming airing at all other times.
2 WCVY airs its own programming out of Coventry High School from 2 to 8 p.m. on school days, with Rhode Island Public Radio programming airing at all other times.
The network's programming is also available on Full Channel Digital Cable channel 799 in Bristol, Warren and Barrington.
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. Clare Gregorian was described as the "driving force" behind the idea.[5] 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.[6] It also had plans to set up a third station to fill the gaps in WXNI's 1,000-watt signal.[7] 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. As a result, WRNI's schedule became almost identical to that of WBUR.
Controversy over sale of 1290AM
On September 17, 2004, with no advance warning, WBUR Group general manager Jane Christo announced that WRNI and WXNI were being put on the market. She wouldn't give any specifics, only saying that it was time for Rhode Islanders to buy the stations if they wanted to keep NPR programming in the state.[6] Indeed, WBUR claimed that it never intended to operate WRNI on a long-term basis, and had only intended to help develop it into a self-sustaining service.[7]
The reaction in Rhode Island was, not surprisingly, hostile. In an editorial, The Providence Journal said that WBUR had made numerous long-term commitments to WRNI. The Journal claimed that if the station's local backers had to buy WRNI, it would be tantamount to buying the station twice.[8]
The announcement led state attorney general Patrick Lynch to open an investigation into WBUR and WRNI.[9]
On September 27, BU interim president Aram Chobanian delayed the sale of WRNI and WXNI, citing concerns raised by both Lynch and Rhode Island GovernorDon Carcieri. Memos obtained by The Boston Globe revealed that WBUR felt the Rhode Island stations were money bleeders, and had decided to either lease or sell the stations at the earliest opportunity.[10] The furor over the WRNI sale was one factor in Christo's resignation almost a month later.[11]
In June 2005, BU took WRNI and WXNI off the market. It promised to hire a full-time general manager based in Providence, and also stepped up local news coverage. As a result, Lynch closed his investigation in November 2006.[9]
Independence from Boston University
On March 21, 2007, WBUR announced that it was selling WRNI to Rhode Island Public Radio (formerly the Foundation for Ocean State Public Radio) for $2 million. Rhode Island Public Radio also announced it was buying WAKX (102.7 FM) in Narragansett Pier from Davidson Media Group to serve as a repeater for WRNI in southern Rhode Island.[12] WAKX, which signed on in 1989, had been a smooth jazz station (though its call letters referred to a former simulcast of WWKX, which lasted from 1997 to 2005). As part of the sale agreement, BU will continue to provide engineering and programming assistance to RIPR for five years.
RIPR officially took control of WAKX on May 17, 2007; changing the calls to WRNI-FM. The addition of WRNI-FM made WXNI redundant, and BU has sold that station separately to Diponti Communications, which renamed it WBLQ. RIPR took control of WRNI on September 1, 2008.
RIPR registered the domain name ripr.org on February 13, 2007; the site was live as of June 2007.
Migration to FM
Recognizing the long-term challenges of AM broadcasting,[13] and the general expectation by public radio listeners that public radio stations transmit in the non-commercial F.M. subband (88.1-91.9MHz),[14] in 2011 WRNI began to expand into a statewide network of FM signals. Accordingly, it also began branding itself exclusively as "Rhode Island Public Radio."
91.5FM First, in July 2011, RIPR entered an agreement with WCVY (91.5 FM), which is owned & operated by Coventry High School and covers the Kent County region. Previously, because WCVY did not broadcast 24/7, they had been forced, under FCC rule 73.561(b), to "share-time" 16 hours per day of the frequency with the now-defunct religious station WRJI. After WRJI lost its license, RIPR assisted WCVY in "reclaiming" the frequency for 24/7 operation. WCVY still airs its own student-created programming on weekdays from 2-8p.m. when school is in session, and RIPR fills the remainder of the time to avoid another "share-time" challenge.[15]
88.1FM Then, on October 8, 2011, RIPR signed a 10-year lease with The Wheeler School, a K-12 private day school and owner of WELH (88.1 FM).[16] RIPR's content would be heard 24/7 on 88.1 in Providence except for a student-produced sports talk radio midnight-3 Saturday mornings. The remainder of Wheeler's student media was migrated to internet radio and, more recently, to internet video projects.
As part of this new lease, the previous lease tenants on 88.1, Brown Student Radio, and Latino Public Radio, each broadcasting a limited number of hours each day, were displaced:
BSR began an internet radio station "BSRlive" and, in January 2015, was granted an FCC license for an LPFM station WBRU-LP on 101.1FM in Providence, in conjunction with Providence Community Radio and AS220.[17][18]
Latino Public Radio signed a lease with RIPR to broadcast on RIPR's 1290AM signal, WRNI,[19][20] and moved to 1290AM the same day RIPR moved to 88.1FM. In addition to allowing LPR to broadcast 24/7, it also gave them a larger signal.[21]
89.3FM: Most recently, in January 2017, RIPR announced a deal with the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth to purchase WUMD (89.3 FM).[22][23][24][25] The deal includes a move and expansion of the existing signal from the UMassD campus to a taller tower in Tiverton, RI. The station's FCC city of license will change from North Dartmouth, Massachusetts to Newport, Rhode Island. The existing RIPR network of WELH, WCVY and WNPE is not changing as part of this deal. While not quite a "statewide" signal, the new 89.3 will provide one, single frequency that all the Narragansett Bay and South Coast communities can tune to hear the network. On June 26, 2017 "WUMD" ended at noon and transitioned to an online-only station at www.wumd.rocks and the station went dark for two weeks to add new studio/transmitter link equipment. 89.3 returned to the airwaves with RIPR programming at 10p.m. July 11, 2017. Since then, the new facility at a tower in Tiverton has been under construction,[26] and a "license to cover" was applied for with the FCC on August 2, 2018[27] indicating imminent operation from the new facility.
89.3FM Tiverton: on September 1, 2018, the 89.3 WNPN signal began transmitting full time from its new facility on a tower in Tiverton, RI. The move roughly doubles the coverage of the original facility.
WSVH FM 91.1 is a 96,000-watt public radio station broadcasting from Savannah, Georgia, and transmitting from the WVAN-TV 9 tower to the west in Pembroke, Georgia, north of Fort Stewart. It serves the upper Georgia coast and areas well inland, and adjacent areas of far southern South Carolina.
WBUR-FM is a public radio station located in Boston, Massachusetts, owned by Boston University. WBUR is the largest of three NPR member stations in Boston, along with WGBH and WUMB-FM. WBUR produces several nationally distributed programs, including Car Talk, On Point, Only a Game, Here and Now and Open Source, and previously produced The Connection. RadioBoston, launched in 2007, is WBUR's only purely local show. WBUR's positioning statement is "Boston's NPR News Station".
WUNC is the flagship National Public Radio member station for the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, broadcasting on the FM band at 91.5 MHz. Based in Chapel Hill and operated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it airs NPR, American Public Media, Public Radio International, and BBC programming in an "all-news-and-information" format. On the weekends, the network broadcasts locally produced folk music programming; the longest-running continuously produced program offered by the station is Back Porch Music, a weekly folk and traditional music program.
WFCR is a non-commercial FM radio station licensed to Amherst, Massachusetts. It serves as the National Public Radio (NPR) member station for Western Massachusetts, including Springfield. The station operates at 13,000 watts ERP from a transmitter on Mount Lincoln in Pelham, Massachusetts 968 feet above average terrain. The University of Massachusetts Amherst holds the license. The station airs NPR news programs during the morning and afternoon drive times and in the early evening. Middays and overnights are devoted to classical music and jazz is heard during the later evening hours.
WGLT is a public radio station owned by Illinois State University and broadcasting on 89.1 MHz at Normal, Illinois. It broadcasts primarily local news and NPR programs, plus music in the evenings and on weekends. The station also has an FM translator, W278AE on 103.5 MHz in Peoria, to fill in the signal along the Illinois River valley.
WMVY is a non-commercial community-oriented adult album alternative radio station based in the town of Tisbury, Massachusetts and licensed to serve Edgartown, both on the island of Martha's Vineyard. The station is owned by Friends of Mvyradio, Inc.
WCMU-FM is a public radio station in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. The station, owned by Central Michigan University, is a National Public Radio member station, airing a large amount of classical and jazz music along with a variety of other programming. The station call letters WCMU are also used to refer to the station network, CMU Public Radio.
KANU is the flagship station of Kansas Public Radio (KPR), a seven-station network based in Lawrence at the University of Kansas. In addition to KANU, KPR also operates full-power stations KANH in Emporia, KANV in Olsburg, and KANQ in Chanute ; and low-power translators K210CR in Atchison, and K258BT and K250AY in Manhattan.
KCNV is a radio station broadcasting a Classical music and Public Radio format. Licensed to Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, the station serves the Las Vegas area. The station is currently owned by Nevada Public Radio and features programming from American Public Media, National Public Radio and Public Radio International. The station is also broadcast on HD radio.
WKAR is a National Public Radio member station in East Lansing, Michigan, United States; broadcasting at 870 kHz. It is owned by Michigan State University, and carries news and talk shows from NPR. The station has also been licensed to operate a FM Translator at 105.1 MHz (W286DC). It is part of MSU's Broadcasting Services Division, and is a sister station to the FM radio and television stations with the same call letters. Its studios and offices are located in the Communication Arts and Sciences Building, at the southeast corner of Wilson and Red Cedar Roads on the MSU campus.
WVTF is the National Public Radio affiliate serving most of southwestern Virginia. The station is licensed to Roanoke, Virginia, and owned by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University through its fundraising arm, the Virginia Tech Foundation. It airs a format of news and talk programming from NPR, BBC World Service, Public Radio International and other outlets.
WGCU-FM is an NPR-member radio station. Licensed to Fort Myers, Florida, United States, the station is owned by Florida Gulf Coast University. WGCU also operates WMKO-FM 91.7, a full-time satellite station licensed to Marco Island to serve the Naples area. As of June 25th, 2018 WGCU's schedule is entirely NPR news and talk programming.
KCBX is a non-commercial FM radio station that is licensed to San Luis Obispo, California. The public radio station is a member station of National Public Radio (NPR) and airs a wide variety of programming, including All Things Considered, Democracy Now!, and jazz and classical music.
WRPA is a radio station in Providence, Rhode Island broadcasting NPR/public radio news & talk programming. It is owned by Rhode Island Public Radio.
WGBH is a public radio station located in Boston, Massachusetts. WGBH is a member station of National Public Radio (NPR) and an affiliate of Public Radio International (PRI), which itself is owned by WGBH Educational Foundation, and American Public Media (APM). The license-holder is WGBH Educational Foundation, which also owns company flagship WGBH-TV and WGBX-TV, along with WGBY-TV in Springfield.
WBLQ is a radio station licensed to serve Westerly, Rhode Island. The station is owned by Diponti Communications.
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