where a tower donated by the city of Tarboro was erected so the station could send programs to the transmitter. On April 1, 1996, the station returned as WRQM with NPR newsman and North Carolina native Carl Kasell joining local dignitaries, but the transmitter failed after two hours and the station returned to the air the next day. However, fundraising contributions were not as high as initially hoped; the 1997 spring fundraiser, while labeled a "success", still missed its goal by nearly $10,000. Additionally, the station had fewer than five full-time staff, which almost prompted NPR to drop the station as a full member for not meeting its criteria. Sale to WUNC In September 1998, the city of Rocky Mount began preparing to construct the library planned for the WRQM studio site. While the station was able to find a potential location for a new studio, a studio-to-transmitter link to the transmitter site on Temperance Road could not be set up from the proposed new facilities. Furthermore, the station was $135,000 in debt. By December, it was apparent that there weren't enough listeners in the area for the station to be viable as a standalone NPR member. Friends of Down East Public Radio began weighing two merger offers: one from WTEB (by now calling itself Public Radio East) and one from WUNC. The board unanimously selected the WUNC bid. WUNC announced its intention to continue to offer local programming on WRQM, though WUNC began programming the station from Chapel Hill on March 24, 1999 under a time-share agreement, with two workers and a handful of local productions continuing in Rocky Mount for the time being. However, because of the loss of the former WRQM studios and state contracting policies preventing WUNC from leasing space for a studio in Rocky Mount, WUNC was approved to convert WRQM into a full-time satellite in 2001. The move expanded WUNC's footprint to Greenville, which gets grade B coverage from WRQM; previously, the only source of NPR programming in that city was a translator of WTEB. Since 2001, WRQM has been a straight simulcast of WUNC, with its call letters only mentioned during hourly legal IDs. References External links Official website NPR member stations RQM Radio stations established in 1992 1992 establishments in North Carolina University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill RQM