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Sunny 106.9 to be renamed

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AMERICOM NEWS RELEASE

Northern Nevada’s No. 1-rated radio station, KRNO/106.9 FM, announced today that it will change its name from “Sunny” to “More FM™” later this month.

“We’re not making major programming changes, but we’re updating our nickname to better reflect our long-time position of ‘playing more music with less talk,’” said Tom Quinn, president of Americom Broadcasting, which owns the station.

The name change comes after a decade of sustained dominance, with KRNO being the most listened to station in the Reno radio market during most ratings periods since 1998, particularly among adults 25 to 54 years old, which is the key demographic sought by most advertisers.

Stations are rated twice yearly by Nielsen Audio, previously known as Arbitron.

“KRNO changed its name once before, back in the mid-1990s, from ‘K-Reno’ to ‘Sunny’ because the ‘K-Reno’ name reflected an older easy listening kind of music that KRNO no longer played,” Quinn explained. “That change worked out very well and we became the dominant station in Northern Nevada.”

Quinn said the new name change follows a research project that showed many people associate the “Sunny” name with music and artists that the station hasn’t played for many years.

“KRNO has changed over the years, but some people still think we feature music by Michael Bolton, Celine Dion, Gloria Estefan, Rod Stewart and Neil Diamond,” he said. “The update from Sunny 106.9 to More FM™ is designed to help us match listener perceptions with our current reality.”

Lori Heeren, KRNO’s vice president and general manager, said the company is confident that the name change will help propel the station to even greater growth in the years to come.

“We’re updating KRNO’s nickname while we’re the dominant ratings-leader because we believe the time to change is when you’re on top, not when you’re in trouble,” she added. “Our research showed that our key strength is that we play more of the music our audience loves with less of the talk that they don’t want.”

Quinn said the name More FM™ surfaced as an obvious choice as listeners told the station that playing more music is what they want.

“So now we’re going to be playing even more music by embracing our strength and emphasizing what matters most to our listeners,” he added.

Quinn said KRNO will continue to play the same “great contemporary songs” it has been playing, but will now play even more. The station’s air staff, including Jeff Ryan and Tessa Marie in the morning, Dan Fritz during middays, Amy Foxx in afternoons and Delilah at night, will remain the same.

Heeren added that many leading companies successfully updated their perceptions and saw great growth after changing their names.

“Right here in Reno, Washoe Med changed to Renown, and recently Sierra Pacific Power changed to NV Energy,” she said. “Earlier, the Clarion Hotel changed to the Atlantis. Nationally, GTE a decade ago changed its name to Verizon. Before that BankAmericard changed to Visa and Datsun cars became Nissan. Those changes all benefited those companies.

“We expect KRNO’s new name will help boost us to even greater success, and we believe our listeners will love the fact that we’ll be playing more music than ever before.”

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