Update 10/22: “107.3 K-News” KNEZ will debut on Tuesday with the following lineup: 6-9am Glenn Beck, 9am-12pm Mike Huckabee, 12pm-3pm Michael Smerconish, 3pm-6pm Sean Patrick, 6pm-9pm Rusty Humphries. Patrick, the only local host in the lineup, will serve as News Director for the station. KNEZ will join Cumulus’ News/Talk 780 KKOH and Americom’s pair of Hot Talk “1270/96.1 The Buzz” KBZZ and Liberal Talk 1230 KJFK in the spoken word battle in Reno.

Update 10/21: The first of Shamrock’s stations has signed on as 107.3 KNEZ is stunting with all Michael Jackson. It appears now that the station will debut its permanent format as News/Talk “KNews“. A Twitter account with a logo for the station has gone live.

Two of the other stations in the cluster have taken on new call letters as KRZQ moves from 105.3 to what was 104.1 KZZD. 105.3 becomes KZTI, which seems to match the 1053MartiniRadio.com domain mentioned below.

Update 9/26: Shamrock continues to prepare for its coming launch of four stations in Reno. Since our last report, two of the stations have taken new call letters while more domains have been registered for possible formats while none really tip their hand at permanent formats.

1041ShredFM.com was registered for KZZD Fallon on August 13.

We previously reported that 1053MartiniRadio.com was registered for KRZQ Fallon Station. 1053HitzFM.com was added on August 13 for this station, which still holds the calls of the heritage Modern Rocker in the market.

106.3 KZHD Lovelock has changed its calls to KWNZ. Those calls also have a long history in the Reno market; first on 97.3 from 1984 to 2004 and later on 93.7 from 2004 until August 2011 usually with a CHR or Rhythmic CHR format. 1063PopFM.com was the first domain registered for that frequency, but was later joined by 1063Froggy.com on August 13 and an anonymous registration for KWNZ1063.com on September 22.

107.3 KEHD Fernley’s calls have changed to KNEZ. Those calls are somewhat similar to Cumulus AC “Magic 95.5” KNEV in the market. 1073TheDrive.com was registered in August for the station as was a generic KNewsReno.com for possible use at any of the stations.

While still no launch dates have been announced for the stations, word is they are coming sooner rather than later.

Update 7/18: Last week Shamrock launched MyRenoRadio.com to conduct market research on what potential listeners in the market may be most interested in seeing as format options for the new frequencies. That has now followed with domain registrations clueing the future identity for two of the four soon to launch stations.

1053MartiniRadio.com has been registered for 105.3 KRZQ Fallon Station while 1063PopFM.com is in place for 106.3 KZHD Lovelock. Those two frequencies have not seen their booster applications approved by the FCC yet, so both will be rimshots into the market for the time being.

We do not yet have registrations for 104.1 KZZD Fallon and 107.3 KEHD Fernley. Those stations have seen their applications for on-channel boosters approved which will give the stations full market coverage upon launch. No word yet on possible formats but with the KRZQ calls in place in the cluster and slight teases on the MyRenoRadio Facebook page, Alternative Rock seems a good bet for one of those signals.

Original Report 2/22: Shamrock Communications is taking the unprecedented step of launching a brand new cluster with four new stations in one market. The company is moving Willobee, Operations Manager of its Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, PA cluster to the same position at its under construction Reno group. The four stations were all acquired via the previous FCC auction.

The four stations will all operate with 100kW horizontal at 1968 feet from the same location 54 miles northeast of the market with on-channel boosters much closer to Reno. Three of the stations will have 17.5kW boosters in Reno. They are as follows:

104.1 KZZD Fallon, 105.3 KRZQ Fallon Station, 106.3 KZHD Lovelock, and 107.3 KEHD Fernley NV. 105.3 does not yet have a booster application in place.

The appointment of Willobee, who helped launch “Edge 106.3” KEDJ Phoenix and later programmed WEQX Albany and “FM 92.1” Wilkes-Barre, along with the reservation of the KRZQ calls after being dropped by what is now “Mix 100.9” KMXW seem to indicate at least one of the stations will be used for an Alternative Rock format.