WNET (Rhode Island)

WNET was a television station broadcasting on ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 16 serving Providence, Rhode Island, United States, from April 5, 1954, to July 10, 1955. It was owned by Channel 16 of Rhode Island, Inc., and aired programs from the CBS, ABC, and DuMont television networks. The station's facilities were located in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.

On the air, the station was generally economically unsuccessful, with losses averaging $11,000 a month (equivalent to $99,000 in 2023) because of technical and economic issues inherent in early UHF television broadcasting. Off the air, its history was dominated by a lengthy fight with rival broadcaster Cherry & Webb, which held a permit to bring Rhode Island a second very high frequency (VHF) station that could reach all homes and whose proposed station Channel 16 of Rhode Island believed would cause it economic injury. WNET lost the battle, and WPRO-TV began broadcasting over VHF channel 12 on March 27, 1955; channel 16 discontinued all of its local programs before folding in July.

On paper, WNET continued to exist long after it left the air. It lost a battle to move channel 3 from Hartford, Connecticut, to Westerly for its use, and it settled the dispute with Cherry & Webb in 1957. In 1969, the Federal Communications Commission deleted its construction permit for failure to return to the air. Channel 16 of New England successfully appealed the dismissal, but by that point, the WNET call sign had been assigned to the New York City–area public TV station. Additionally, the FCC moved the station to channel 64 because it had already reserved channel 16 for land mobile radio system use regionally. The permit was sold in 1980 to a group intending to use it for subscription television programming, which returned the station to air in December 1981—more than 26 years after WNET signed off—as WSTG, today's WNAC-TV.