Rhode Island Radio

The earliest ancestor to WPRO, WKBF, began broadcasting from Cranston, Rhode Island on June 15, 1924, ¹ owned by Dutee Wilcox Flint and operating at 1050 kHz; ² in January 1925, the call letters were changed to WDWF, reflecting the owner's initials, and the station moved to 680 kHz ³ That December, Lincoln Studios began to share ownership of the station with Flint; Lincoln broadcast its programming under the call sign WLSI. ⁴ WDWF and WLSI moved to 800 kHz. by June 30, 1927, ⁵ to 1090 kHz in October, ⁶ to 1150 kHz in November, ⁶ and to 1210 kHz in February 1928. ⁷ By 1930, the studios for WDWF and WLSI were located in Providence. ⁷

The Cherry & Webb Era (September 1931-April 1959) Providence department store Cherry & Webb acquired the station in September 1931, and merged the two stations under a single license with the call letters WPRO. ⁸ The merged station formally relaunched on October 16. ⁹ The purchase made Cherry & Webb the third department store in Providence to get into radio broadcasting, after the 1922 launches of Shepard Stores' WEAN (now WPRV, a sister station to WPRO) and The Outlet Company's WJAR (now WHJJ). ¹¹ The following February, Cherry & Webb purchased another station at 1210 kHz, WPAW in nearby Pawtucket, ¹⁰ which had been granted a license in August 1926 as WFCI, owned by Frank Cook Inc. ³ and operating at 1160 kHz, ¹³ ¹⁴ moved to 1330 kHz by June 30, 1927, ⁷ to 1240 that August, ¹² and to 1210 kHz in November 1928, concurrent with the change to WPAW.[18] Following the acquisition, the station used WPAW in tandem with WPRO until 1933. ¹⁵ ¹⁶ The station moved to its current frequency, 630 kHz, in 1934. ¹⁷ WPRO was an affiliate of the short-lived American Broadcasting System in 1935; ¹⁸ in 1937, the station joined the CBS Radio Network, replacing charter affiliate WEAN. ¹⁹

Radio Guide December 25, 1931

Click to enlarge
WPRO Postcard September 17, 1932

Click to enlarge
Heinl Radio Business Letter
February 8, 1932
Application Received

Click to enlarge
Heinl Radio Business Letter
April 17, 1932
Application Received

Heinl Radio Business Letter
May 19, 1932
Hearing Scheduled

Click to enlarge
Heinl Radio Business Letter
May 31, 1932
Set For Hearing

Providence Journal May 12, 934

Providence Journal
January 1, 1937

In 1936, even though the station was owned by Cherry & Webb, the studios were located in the Metropolitan Theater in Providence. ²³

Metropolitan Theater with WPRO Antenna on top
Curtesy of Gerry D

Although WPRO's city of license was changed from Cranston to Providence soon after Cherry & Webb took over, ¹⁰ the station's transmitter remained in Cranston ¹⁵ until its destruction in the 1938 New England hurricane; ²⁰ it then constructed a new transmission facility in East Providence. ²¹ FM service was added on April 17, 1948 with the debut of WPRO-FM (92.3 MHz), ¹³ and a television sister station, WPRO-TV (channel 12), went on the air March 27, 1955. ²²