GOOD MORNING, it’s Deborah Becker with Morning Edition at WRNI
The owner of air waves newcomer WRNI has anted up another $300,000 for a second station in Westerly, making the latest in public radio programming available to more Rhode Islanders.
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The purchase of Bear Broadcasting’s nearly half-century-old WERI-AM by Boston University’s WBUR early last month means an estimated 70 percent of the state’s population can access news and talk shows from a variety of sources including National Public Radio, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Public Radio International (PRI), and syndicated shows produced by WBUR such as “Car Talk,” “Only a Game” and “The Connection.” Renamed WXNI, the station began broadcasting Jan. 1 at 1230 AM, airing local news, weather and sports during so-called commuting hours.
Steve Elman, WBUR’s assistant general manager, said the acquisition of the 1,000-watt station on the Rhode Island/Connecticut border is the second step of a larger plan to have 100,000 loyal listeners to the NPR-member station within five years.
WBUR took the first step last spring when it paid Neto Communications $2 million for Providence’s WRCP at 1290 AM. Renamed WRNI, that station began broadcasting its non-commercial format on May 1. The station’s 5,000-watt signal is concentrated in the eastern part of the state, from Woonsocket to Newport, spilling across the Massachusetts border into Attleboro.
WXNI reaches Rhode Island’s southernmost communities, including Westerly, Charlestown, Hopkinton and Richmond; and also Stonington, North Stonington and Mystic, Connecticut.
The fiscal year ending June 30 will be “the big growth year” in terms of technology and programming, Elman said.
”Our plans are to work carefully with both stations to improve the signal as much as possible.” Also, WBUR will likely purchase a low-power, “translator” station to cover an approximately 10-mile radius in the Newport area where WRNI’s signal is weak, he said.
Another milestone will be renovations to WRNI’s Douglas Street station this spring for the purpose of producing a five-day-a-week public affairs show “designed for Rhode Island,” Elman said.
Lori Urso, station manager for WERI-FM and wife of Bear Broadcasting owner Mark Urso, said WBUR was one of many suitors over the years, but clearly the best qualified to serve the community.
”This was an opportunity to bring National Public Radio into Westerly and we felt there is in WXNI’s future more local talk and news,” Urso said.
The best of WERI-AM programming can still be heard at 99.3 FM, Urso said, citing local favorites such as “Sports Open Mic” and “Watershed Radio.”
WXNI’s on-going operations are being financed almost entirely by listeners and corporate sponsors, as are WRNI’s. For the last two months of fiscal 1998, listeners donated about $79,000 to WRNI, Elman said. The station received another $33,000 from corporate underwriters and a $100,000 grant from the Rhode Island Foundation.
Elman projected total contributions of more than $500,000 to both stations during fiscal 1999. The combined operating budget is $1.37 million, he said.
The impact of WRNI and WXNI on other popular news and talk stations will be difficult to determine going into the future, according to Robert Maccini, director of Providence’s Media Service Group, a national broker of radio and television stations. However, he guessed it will be minimal.
”Although (WRNI and WXNI are) non-commercial, whatever money goes to underwriting is definitely money that might have gone to a commercial radio station,” Maccini said. “But they’re never going to challenge a (W)PRO (630 AM) or the other dominant talk stations.”
Being high on the AM band where signals grow weak is a definite disadvantage for the newcomers, Macinni said. At the most, a quarter of the national radio audience listens on the AM dial, he said. And locally “PRO and (W)HJJ (920-AM) have a much better signal than both WRNI and WERI (now WXNI) together.”
“They’ll be successful,” Macinni predicted of WRNI and WXNI. However, the extent of that success will be difficult to measure.
”The type of people that listen to public radio have a very low response rate to Arbitron,” surveys tracking local radio audiences, he said. “So, typically, those stations never have great ratings.”
