WRQM (90.9 FM) is a radio station broadcasting National Public Radio (NPR) programming. Licensed to Rocky Mount, North Carolina and owned by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, it serves the Rocky Mount area as a full-time satellite of WUNC-FM in Chapel Hill. The station has been owned by WUNC since 1999 and operated as a straight simulcast of WUNC since 2001, though for its first seven years it was an independent public radio station based in Rocky Mount. History At North Carolina Wesleyan College On November 1, 1988, North Carolina Wesleyan College applied for a construction permit to build a new radio station in Rocky Mount. The station was conceived to fill the void left when WVSP, which was licensed to Warrenton but had moved its studios to Rocky Mount in 1985, shuttered in 1987. The college had initially gotten involved in efforts to keep WVSP in operation, but instead, it put together a new community group to build a new public radio station; among the members in 1989 were several people formerly associated with Sound and Print United, which owned WVSP. WESQ was granted its construction permit in 1990, and the station was taking shape in temporary facilities—a trailer beside the NCWC Student Activities Center—by 1991. Wesleyan was in the process of building a new fine arts building to house the station and a 1,200-seat auditorium. The station signed on in April 1992; in November, it brought NPR programming back to the region through a collaboration with WTEB in New Bern. Friends of Down East Public Radio The station's history took a turn in 1995 when North Carolina Wesleyan College decided to cease funding the station and cut all ties; the school said it had failed to find a way to integrate WESQ into its curriculum and that running costs had been too high. A not-for-profit business group, Friends of Down East Public Radio, Inc., stepped in to buy the station from NCWC. Friends of Down East signed a lease agreement to move WESQ off the NCWC campus and into a city-owned building at downtown Rocky Mount that was formerly the headquarters of the Coastal Plains Life Insurance Company, though the property was also the site of a proposed library that would have required its demolition. The station went off the air on December 25 in order to prepare for the move to the new site,