The death of KFMG. The annoying repetition of KKDM. Central Iowa music fans have the radio station blues and Iowa State has the KURE.

KURE succeeds Iowa State’s campus radio station KUSR, which shut down last October due to problems with their Federal Communications Commission license. KURE went on the air for the first time on Aug. 12 and will broadcast officially within a few weeks.

“We are currently conducting transfer tests which must be done on the air,” Acting General Manager Jason Looft said. “KURE is in perfect standing with the FCC.”

KURE will broadcast at a frequency of 88.5 at 250 watts. “We are at 80 watts now and can be heard in Huxley,” Communications Director Jay Wacker said. “We won’t know until we turn it up to 250, but northern parts of Des Moines should be able to pick it up.”

According to Looft, the increase of power will not affect the focus of the station. “Our goal remains to service the ISU campus and Ames community.”

The station is currently on the air eight to 12 hours a day, but will increase to continual broadcasting the first week of classes. KURE will continue with KUSR’s rock/alternative format, with speciality shows airing on the weekends.

Sports and news programs are also expected to take weekend slots.

“We will be broadcasting football and men’s basketball home games and may be doing some hockey,” Looft said. “We have the option of covering whatever we want to.”

Looft credits their advisors for the many accomplishments at the station in the last nine months. With financial help from the Government of the Student Body and Inter-Residence Hall Association, KURE were able to purchase a new control board and have changed to digital in-house production.

“We were able to update and fix up most of our equipment,” Looft said. “I will say that the new board was less than ten thousand. It is much more straight forward than the old board. Anyone with mixer experience should be able to pick it up quickly.”

Also new to the station is a separate department designed to handle promotional activities. KURE will do some covering of local concerts to boost promotions.

“I’m sure we’ll be doing a lot of flyers and banners,” Looft said. “We’ve got quite a few CDs we’ll be giving away as well.”

KURE is staffed completely by student volunteers. Applications are available for a number of positions including disc jockeys. KURE is located at 1191 Friley Hall.