Information

Rhode Island’s leading non-commercial radio station, WRIU is the sonic embodiment of the independent spirit that spurred the creation of the state (and later inspired the whole nation… you know… that independent spirit).

A broadcast service of the University of Rhode Island, WRIU is managed by a student-run Executive Board and staffed by many dedicated student and community volunteers. Our offices and broadcast facilities are located on the third floor of the Memorial Union on URI’s Kingston campus.

The station operates a 3500 Watt FM station broadcasting at 90.3 FM from a transmitter located on the URI campus to all of Rhode Island, as well as parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Long Island, NY, and worldwide via our online stream. It also operates a sister station serving both the URI community and the entire world via an online stream.

WRIU is completely non-commercial, and receives all of its funding from three sources: the students of the University of Rhode Island, revenue earned from underwriting and, most importantly, through the support of its listeners during our annual fundraiser.

Being a non-commercial station allows WRIU the freedom to provide listeners with programming that is unlikely to find a home on stations that must rely on advertising revenue. This results in some of the most varied and exciting programming on your radio dial! Our program hosts are some of the most knowledgeable people in their specialties and week after week they bring you the newest and greatest music from around the globe.

WRIU-FM has been broadcasting for over fifty years (and even longer as an AM station). The modern block format has been in place, more or less the same, for over thirty years. Weekday programming is divided among the five major music departments (Jazz, Classical, Hip Hop, Folk and Rock) along with a mid-day student freeform slot offering a variety of styles throughout the week. Overnights and weekends are devoted to a wide range of specialty programming. In addition to this, WRIU is your home for URI athletics and other campus and local events.

RIU2, our student-centric online sister station, is the modern descendent of the original Rhode Island State College Network, established in the 1930’s that evolved into WRIU. What is now RIU2 has operated via a variety of transmission methods over the course of those many decades, existing as an AM broadcast station, a closed-circuit transmission, a cable radio station on the URI campus cable system and now as an online stream. In all of its incarnations, RIU2 has served to give URI students their first taste of broadcasting. RIU2 also continues its historical role as the leading broadcast source for a variety of URI athletic events, as well as a home for student-centric music and talk programming.