WXPR

The vision for WXPR was developed by Peter Nordgren, whose previous involvement in noncommercial radio was with WSSU at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, as well as KBSB and KAXE. Other early staff and Board of Directors included local businessman Michael Seraphin, a former commercial broadcaster at WOBT in Rhinelander as well as radio stations in Wisconsin's Fox Valley and Colorado; Mary Kay Foltz Sherer, a fundraising specialist from Minocqua who would go on to be development director at Wisconsin Public Radio; retired Army Signal Corps colonel Elmer Goetsch, and construction worker Robert M. (Mick) Fiocchi of Rhinelander, later WXPR's general manager. The first program director was W. Scott Yankus, later with Minnesota Public Radio and Marketplace (radio program); other staff included news director Jeff Gavin and programming staff Rita Rahoi, later a professor of communications at Winona State University. WXPR was one of fourteen stations in underserved areas whose development in the early 1980s was supported by expansion grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A re-authorization of the Public Broadcasting Financing Act of 1975 signed by President Jimmy Carter on January 15, 1981 provided critical funds to erect a tower near Three-Lakes, Wisconsin. Additional resources included a donated used transmitter from the University of Wisconsin-Stout in June 1981 and an 18-acre transmitter site donated by Wausau Paper Mills. Local fundraising efforts raised $40,000 through membership drives in 1982 to match federal requirements. Seraphin's suggestion for call letters WXPR won out over 100 other submissions. WXPR began broadcasting at 12-noon on April 24, 1983.