Radio News 90.3 (WPLN)

WPLN-FM (90.3 FM), is a National Public Radio-affiliated station in Nashville, Tennessee. Since September 2009, the station has broadcast primarily a news and talk format, with classical music during the nighttime hours on weekdays and various programming on weekends. The station maintains studios on Mainstream Drive north of downtown Nashville, studios that some consider among the finest radio production facilities in the U.S.WPLN began as a modest extension of the city's public library system, beginning operations on December 17, 1962 from the Richland Park library branch on Charlotte Avenue in West Nashville. It broadcast a limited schedule, almost entirely of classical music, only on Mondays through Fridays, and was only heard in and around the city of Nashville proper. A year later, Nashville and Davidson County merged to form a metropolitan government. The library—and with it WPLN—became an arm of the new structure.In 1965, the library moved the station into the then-newly-constructed main library downtown (it has since been replaced). By that time, the station had begun operating a full seven days a week. The station was one of the 73 charter members of National Public Radio in 1970—one of the first public radio stations in the South to join the network. The station's website claims it joined NPR in 1968, but this is incorrect; NPR was not founded until two years later.In 1972, WPLN began broadcasting in stereo and at a full 100,000 watts of power. A "Talking Library" subchannel for blind (and visually-impaired) residents of the area began in 1975. Schedule and programming expansion continued at a steady pace throughout the 1980s and 1990s, while WPLN's physical plant did not expand beyond a block of rooms in the library building.In order to rectify the space shortage and provide more extensive service to the community than was possible under the budgetary and bureaucratic constraints of the public library system, the library board decided in 1995 to begin proceedings to release the station to an independent community board. The public library relinquished control of WPLN-FM on October 1, 1996 to a group known as "Nashville Public Radio." The station eventually moved out of the library into a modern studio in the Metrocenter area on May 24, 1998.The success of this move may have prompted the Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County school system, which operated public television outlet WDCN (channel 8), to follow suit three years later. That station is now WNPT.WPLN-FM was one of only a few non-commercial FM licenses held by a public library system in the U.S. In most cases, libraries usually operate radio frequencies only for radio-reading services (like that mentioned above) for the blind and visually impaired, signals that are available only on special receivers.