WROU was founded by Ro Nita Hawes-Saunders, an educator and dancer who was once an on-air personality at
WDAO, in 1991. At the start, it was a typical locally owned mainstream urban with live airstaffers until
Radio One purchased the station in 2003, after several years of resisting offers to sell the outlet and to fight off bankruptcy. Since the sale of WROU Hawes-Saunders continued to work with the
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company as its executive director and serves as a board member of Parents Advancing Choice in Education, Inc. (PACE), which was formed in 1998 to help assist families who seek to exercise education choice for their children while helping schools adopt strategies for improvement. Her life as a radio station owner was also profiled in 2009 in the syndicated television series "Lifestyles with Rebecca". After Radio One took over the ownership of WROU, it adjusted the format to an
urban AC presentation due to having
WDHT (whose signal and coverage is much larger than WROU) taking the younger demos with its R&B/hip-hop heavy rhythmic product. WROU was briefly known as WRNB after the sale, but reverted to the original calls in 2004. WRNB was originally at 96.9 FM and licensed to Troy as satellite-formatted "Solid Gold Soul" and was at one time the sister station to WROU, which is now
Air1 station
WYDA. The
WRNB calls are now used for Radio One's urban AC FM station in Philadelphia. On May 17, 2007, Philadelphia-based Main Line Broadcasting announced the acquisition of Radio One's stations in the Dayton and
Louisville market areas. Main Line took over the Dayton stations on September 14, 2007. Main Line would be acquired by
Alpha Media in 2014. Alpha Media merged with
Connoisseur Media on September 4, 2025. ==Previous notable on-air staff==