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WRNR of Annapolis ceases broadcast Friday; 103.1 FM will carry contemporary Christian simulcast
The WRNR website is still playing the music that WRNR used to broadcast. I listened to Little Steven's Underground Garage on WRNR via Radio Garden last night.
ANNAPOLIS
WRNR of Annapolis ceases broadcast Friday; 103.1 FM will carry contemporary Christian simulcast thereafter
By Rebecca Ritzel
Capital Gazette • Feb 10, 2023 at 7:54 pm
WRNR, a beloved Annapolis adult alternative station, will go off the air for good at the stroke of twelve Friday night and become a Christian radio station. ... Steve Kingston, who has owned the station since 1998, confirmed the news, and said there would be no dramatic carriage-turns-into-a-pumpkin moment. /// “We are just going to go off quietly and see what they do at midnight,” Kingston said.
The Federal Communications Commission approved the transfer of 103.1 FM from WRNR to Peter & John Radio Fellowship on Jan. 25. Leaders of the nonprofit, which oversees Maryland’s largest evangelical Christian broadcasting network, including the flagship Christian news station WRBS, did not respond to requests for comment. ... News of the $1.5 million sale became public in November when WRNR submitted an application to the FCC proposing to transfer its frequency to WRBS, the official FCC designation for Peter & John Radio Fellowship.
{snip}
WRNR was founded in the early 1980s as WAQA. Kingston, a Maryland native and career radio broadcaster, purchased the station in 1998 as part of a $2.4 million deal. Those were the peak days of alternative rock in the mid-Atlantic. Counting Crows, fronted by Marylander Adam Duritz, and the Dave Matthews Band, which coalesced at the University of Virginia, ruled the airwaves.
[ Baltimore County-based Christian radio group to buy Annapolis’ WRNR-FM for $1.54 million ]
But as pop music tastes shifted, those bands and their ilk lived up to the name “alternative” rock. WRNR became the aural destination for listeners who didn’t buy Britney Spears’ toxic bubble gum or gravitate toward R&B. The station, with a transmitter in Grasonville and a rented studio in Annapolis, evolved into a Gen-X haven, slightly more mainstream than WTMD-FM, the indie public radio station in Towson, but more alternative than anything else on the dial, especially once WHFS switched formats. In recent years, WRNR helped launch Easton native Maggie Rogers, a local favorite who once sang in the WRNR studio, to a gold-certified “Saturday Night Live” musical guest.
{snip}
Baltimore Sun reporter Mary Carole McCauley contributed to this story
WRNR of Annapolis ceases broadcast Friday; 103.1 FM will carry contemporary Christian simulcast thereafter
By Rebecca Ritzel
Capital Gazette • Feb 10, 2023 at 7:54 pm
WRNR, a beloved Annapolis adult alternative station, will go off the air for good at the stroke of twelve Friday night and become a Christian radio station. ... Steve Kingston, who has owned the station since 1998, confirmed the news, and said there would be no dramatic carriage-turns-into-a-pumpkin moment. /// “We are just going to go off quietly and see what they do at midnight,” Kingston said.
The Federal Communications Commission approved the transfer of 103.1 FM from WRNR to Peter & John Radio Fellowship on Jan. 25. Leaders of the nonprofit, which oversees Maryland’s largest evangelical Christian broadcasting network, including the flagship Christian news station WRBS, did not respond to requests for comment. ... News of the $1.5 million sale became public in November when WRNR submitted an application to the FCC proposing to transfer its frequency to WRBS, the official FCC designation for Peter & John Radio Fellowship.
{snip}
WRNR was founded in the early 1980s as WAQA. Kingston, a Maryland native and career radio broadcaster, purchased the station in 1998 as part of a $2.4 million deal. Those were the peak days of alternative rock in the mid-Atlantic. Counting Crows, fronted by Marylander Adam Duritz, and the Dave Matthews Band, which coalesced at the University of Virginia, ruled the airwaves.
[ Baltimore County-based Christian radio group to buy Annapolis’ WRNR-FM for $1.54 million ]
But as pop music tastes shifted, those bands and their ilk lived up to the name “alternative” rock. WRNR became the aural destination for listeners who didn’t buy Britney Spears’ toxic bubble gum or gravitate toward R&B. The station, with a transmitter in Grasonville and a rented studio in Annapolis, evolved into a Gen-X haven, slightly more mainstream than WTMD-FM, the indie public radio station in Towson, but more alternative than anything else on the dial, especially once WHFS switched formats. In recent years, WRNR helped launch Easton native Maggie Rogers, a local favorite who once sang in the WRNR studio, to a gold-certified “Saturday Night Live” musical guest.
{snip}
Baltimore Sun reporter Mary Carole McCauley contributed to this story