After a couple hours testing/stunting with NOAA Weather Radio, Hometown Broadcasting’s 97.5 KNXR Rochester, MN debuted its new identity this afternoon as Hot AC “97.5 Pulse-FM“.
Tom Garrett, the former MD/Morning Host at Townsquare Media’s “Y105” 105.3 KYBA will serve as GM/PD for the station as well as host the “Med City Morning Show” from 5:30 to 10:00am. KNXR is positioning as “Rochester’s Adult Hit Music From The 80s To Now”.
Original Report 1/30: Another one of the few remaining Beautiful Music holdouts will cease broadcasting tonight as the sale of 97.5 KNXR Rochester, MN closes leading to the end of the current format.
Greg Jensen’s Hometown Broadcasting purchased KNXR from current owner United Audio Corporation for either $714,910 or $1.1 million depending on whether they were able to acquire a share of the station’s tower site from Minnesota Public Radio. KNXR will sign-off at 1am Saturday morning before returning to the air at a later date with a new format from new studios.
At that time it is expected the station will be branded as “97.5 Pulse-FM” as Hometown registered 975PulseFM.com earlier this month. Such a move will likely place the station in direct competition with Townsquare Media’s market leading CHR 106.9 KROC-FM.
Eric Jon Magnuson
The domain registration was referenced (with attribution) in the text version of KTTC’s story on the final day; see http://www.kttc.com/story/27990214/2015/01/30/975-fm-bids-farewell-to-radio-founder-reflects-on-nearly-50-years-of-uplifting-sound.
Also, both that story and other items that I’ve seen mention that an online version of the discontinued format is being worked on, and may launch within a few months.
After some delays, the official sign-on for Pulse is scheduled for less than an hour from now (4:00 p.m. CT).
Either the sign-on was early or KTTC broke some sort of embargo…
http://www.kttc.com/story/28190558/2015/02/24/975-knxr-fm-returns-to-the-air-as-pulse-fm