Townsquare Media Alternative 94.1 KRNA Iowa City/Cedar Rapids flipped to Classic Rock at 5pm Friday.
The move was billed as returning the station to its roots playing the music it played during its heyday. It had launched as an AOR in the 70s before seguing to Active Rock in the early 2000s and Alternative in 2014. The airstaff outside of the syndicated Free Beer & Hot Wings remains in-tact.
KRNA registered a 1.9 share in the Spring 2016 Nielsen Audio ratings. The move will position the station directly against iHeartMedia’s “100.7 The Fox” KKRQ Iowa City, which ranked third in the market with a 7.1 share.
Welcome To The Jungle, baby.
And welcome back to your long gone friends. The ones that gave us all the best classic rock songs. AC/DC, Van Halen, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard.There are dozens more, now back on the air with the return of Classic Rock That Rocks on 94.1 KRNA. The station that has flipped positions more frequently than a greasy politician has now come home for good. But at 5:00 p.m. Friday, August 12, KRNA has returned to Classic Rock.
“The Classic Rock format on 94.1 is my all-time favorite,” explains Operations Manager Mike Ferris. “Every song is a real classic on our playlist, there’s not a bad one in the bunch. That means you can enjoy listening longer on the job, in the car, everywhere.”
“We play only the best bands and artists from the Rolling Stones, Queen, Tom Petty and Pink Floyd to Ozzy Osbourne, U2 and Guns N Roses. Their tracks are the cornerstone of the biggest, most creative period of modern music”.
Born in Iowa City, and now licensed and located in Cedar Rapids, 94.1 KRNA is a 100,000 watt signal that signed on in 1974. Over the years it has dabbled into various genres of rock, from modern to hard rock, and from oldies to alternative.
“But it’s Classic Rock that our listeners keep asking us to bring back” Ferris added, “They know it well, and remember it as the “real” KRNA. And I’m honored and thrilled to be the one who can deliver it to them today.”
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Also, KRNA had a previous run with Classic Rock in the 90’s before moving to Active Rock. That station has been experiencing low ratings for years. The reaction on social media falls in three main camps, those that welcome the new format, a lot of people that are upset that they lost their type of music and those that don’t care about the music they play but are not happy about the cancellation of Free Beer & Hot Wings. Between KKRQ being long established in the format and KFMW mixing the harder classic rock cuts in with the newer active rock, can KRNA reclaim it’s past glory? That is the question. I say in two or three years, they will try something else and flip it back to Alternative or Active Rock.