There's a new radio station on the air in Providence!

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WJAR) — There's a new radio station in Providence.

It's actually three radio stations in one due to a shared licensing agreement between Brown Student and Community Radio.

For now, it has adopted the old call letters of the legendary WBRU, which went off its terrestrial 95.5 frequency in 2018 and is now online-only. It will program 50 percent of the air time.

The city’s large arts organization, AS220, will be responsible for programming 44 percent of the time. Its call letters are WFOO.

Providence Community Radio will take up the remaining six percent of the air time and operate as WVVX.

With a roughly 10 to15 mile coverage radius from its antenna piggy-backed on the Channel 36 tower off the 6/10 Connector, you can pick it up a good distance throughout the metro area.

One of the co-managers of Brown Student and Community Radio, Caitlin Pintavorn, is excited for the station, back “on the air” after its frequency was sold a number of years ago.

“What really 101.1 FM, the signal as a whole is about, is just really bringing as many community voices as possible to the air,” said Pintavorn.

The programming is not limited to music. There's talk, cooking shows, politics, and even mixed martial arts, on the radio.

“Having people that share different types of experiences and different types of music really broadens the perspectives,” said Brown Student and Community Radio co-manager Ricky Hage, adding that it “broadens the horizons of all our listeners.”

Brown Student and Community Radio is using its own established studios that have been around for decades with original programming and is airing some of the former WBRU programs, too. That’s the only affiliation with the old WBRU-FM.

But both AS220's WFOO, and Providence Community Radio, or ProComRad for short, as WVVX, are in their infancy.

WVVX has gotten creative nonetheless.

“People are producing their own content on a laptop or whatever,” said Matt Obert, WVVX’s manager. “And if they can get us a wave file, then we can put it in an automation server that will basically put it on the air.”

AS220's physical location on Empire Street is being renovated. Until that's finished during the spring, they've donated their airtime to Brown Student and Community Radio to program.

“It's an open public resource for anyone to get on the air,” said David Dvorchak, a manager with AS220’s WFOO. “This station really opens that up.”

The goal for both WFOO and WVVX is to have their own visible interactive studios in downtown Providence.

Frank Mullin, the program director of Providence Community Radio’s WVVX, is looking forward to a successful fundraising campaign to accomplish that.

“Yeah, ultimately a store front would be fabulous downtown, you know, with viewing glass and a cafe nearby, maybe a little gallery space,” Mullin said. “All of that would be great. Just things that make Providence interesting, and sort of idiosyncratic, in a way.”

Pintavorn added that “traditional radio still reaches the most listeners in America,” rebutting some critics that claim, “radio is dead,” which was one of the reasons that was given to sell the old non-affiliated 95.5 WBRU.

“To have a sort of outreach platform for their own opinions and their own music taste is a very beautiful and valuable thing,” Pintavorn said, noting that it can be picked up over-the-air, free, without any devices or subscriptions to streaming services.

The "hard launch" of the rebranded three stations in one is early Friday morning at the stroke of midnight. The programmers want you to be part of this new community on the air in Providence.