94.3 FM goes alternative

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2024 (353 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Local FM radio station 94.3 NOW! is now ALT 94.3.

At midnight on Oct. 31, after playing Goodbye by the Spice Girls, the newly branded station made its broadcast debut with Uprising by Muse.

With this, 94.3 FM said farewell to its “Hot AC” format, heavy on more standard adult-contemporary pop fare, and welcomed a new focus on post-2000s indie and alternative rock, such as Death Cab for Cutie, Twenty One Pilots, Arkells, Cage the Elephant, Foster the People and the Foo Fighters, music aimed at cohorts such as millennial parents, who can revisit their favourite hipster hits of yesteryear while picking kids up from school, says program director Dale Davies

“We are excited to be Winnipeg’s music alternative and specialize in what alternative music is today and has been over the past 20-plus years,” general manager Mark Patric is quoted as saying in a press release announcing the rebrand.

Listeners will be greeted with locally-curated playlists and familiar local voices over the airwaves in the afternoon and evening, including NOW morning-show hosts Marika and Turnball, known for the sort of on-air games, gossip and banter that’s generally been a touchstone of 94.3 FM.

Owned since 2013 by the Jim Pattison group — Western Canada’s largest private media company — 94.3 FM has gone through many incarnations since its birth in 1963. This is its fifth renaming since 2008.