| Broadcast area | Research Triangle and eastern North Carolina |
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| Slogan | Bringing the world home to you |
| Frequency |
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| First air date | April 3, 1976 [1] |
| Format | News Talk Information |
| Power | |
| ERP |
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| Callsign meaning |
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| Owner | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| Webcast | [1] M3U |
| Website | wunc.org |
North Carolina Public Radio is a public radio network based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and operated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It broadcasts 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.
North Carolina Public Radio should not be confused with WXYC, which is UNC's student radio station.
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The network consists of three stations: WUNC, broadcasting from Chapel Hill on 91.5 FM; WRQM, from Rocky Mount on 90.9; and WUND-FM, from Manteo on 88.9.
All three stations were referred to simply as "WUNC" until 2005. The stations are now called "North Carolina Public Radio - WUNC", ostensibly to allow transition time between the two names. The call letters of the other stations are identified only during required station IDs at the start of each hour.
WUNC is the flagship NPR station for the Triangle area (Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill). In addition, its 100,000-watt signal covers much of the eastern portion of the Piedmont Triad, including Greensboro and High Point. This is because its transmitter is located on Terrell's Mountain in Chatham County, roughly halfway between Raleigh and Greensboro. WRQM serves the far eastern portion of the Triangle market, while WUND serves northeastern North Carolina and the Outer Banks. Combined, the three stations reach just over half of the state's population.
Aside from Back Porch Music, North Carolina Public Radio also produces The People's Pharmacy with Joe and Terry Graedon, a nationally-syndicated program first broadcast on WUNC in the early 1980s; and The State of Things, a regionally-syndicated local affairs show. The network began offering podcasts for The State of Things and other locally-produced news stories in September 2005.
North Carolina Public Radio's main studios are located in Chapel Hill near the Friday Center; in 2005, a second broadcast facility was opened in Durham's American Tobacco Historic District. On October 17, 2005, The State of Things began production at the new Durham location. Other programs continue production in the Chapel Hill studios.
Dick Gordon, former host of WBUR's The Connection, began hosting a new interview show called The Story with Dick Gordon on February 16, 2006. The News and Observer has reported that North Carolina Public Radio pays Gordon a salary of $210,000 a year, making him better paid than NPR luminary Terry Gross and many other national hosts in public radio.
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.[2]
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."[2] 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.
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