Even in this golden age of information, there are still some pockets out west where news of programming changes takes weeks or months to become known.
One of these cases is in Grand Junction, Colorado which may have the honor of being the smallest market (Ranked 248*) with an All News station. “Newsradio 97.7” KNOZ signed on earlier this year running programming primarily from America’s Radio News Network and local hourly newscasts.
KNOZ is owned by Paul Varecha along with Freeform Rock “104.9/92.7 The Ride” KRYD.
* Earlier we had Grand Junction listed a market 252 which was their ranking until Arbitron updated their survey lists earlier this year.
MattParker 
Arbitron’s website ranks Grand Junction 248. There is another website that places it at 252 but you – of all people – should known better than trust them.
As I recall, some small town stations (like Escanaba and Western New York) did take AP all news radio. But the hard lesson they learned, along with CNN and NBC is canned all news only sells to marginal weak sticks and all news is not a viable format to stations that can’t generate a lot of cume.
I have been curious to see if anybody is taking ARNN (and how much of it they are taking). I have not seen any affiliate lists. I did a Google search and I found only a handful of stations. It also appears that this “network” – like TRN – has a pronounced rightward tilt. Maybe they think they can get controversy-averse advertisers who have bailed on Rush and Beck and still draw the tea crowd.
Grand Junction was 252 until the reranking earlier this year. I’m sorry I missed that. Since there hasn’t been a book release there since the reranking nobody has updated their listings (myself included).
From the few listens I’ve had of ARNN (especially since Phil Boyce left for Salem) they are attempting to center the skew and market themselves as an alternative to the right leaning Talk stations.
I went to the list of markets to see if there had ever been an attempt at the all news format in a market smaller than Grand Junction.
A station in Avon, NY was taking AP all news radio but I that’s more of a rim-shot to Rochester.
Escanaba, MI had one but that’s not an Arbitron market or MSA (but it is a smaller city).
Sunbury, PA had a station that was all news during the day (syndicated sports at night) but they have gone to news/talk.
I listened to ARNN a few times and wasn’t that impressed. On air AP and CNN put together much better products, as did NBC NIS. Even HLN audio was better. If the purpose is to avoid controversy, a station might do better with Huckabee or the Salem hosts.