This comes as a huge shock. The story from KCRG-TV 9 Cedar Rapids: http://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Cr...een-Wright-Bros-Blvd-and-US-30-471711424.html
I remember well the 1979 sign-on of KRNA's 100 kW transmitter, living about 40 miles south of their tower site. KRNA was founded by a group of young Iowa City turks several years earlier, occupying the class A channel 93.5. A few years later, I heard the long standing tale that Rob Norton was the namesake of KRNA, as in "Kick Robby Norton's Ass!" certainly the product of a bar room brainstorming session.
Fast forward about twenty years, and I was working for a Des Moines traffic operation. One of our salespeople worked for KRNA and KZIA in the 90s, during the great consolidation boom. Norton, Eliot Keller and the rest of the ownership group had decided to sell the two stations, then had second thoughts. It was too late to save their baby, KRNA. But they were able to cancel the sale of the second station, KZIA, that the KRNA partners acquired several years earlier.
The decades fly away too fast. Keller and Norton expanded with a couple of other Cedar Rapids stations but never sought to own any properties elsewhere. They bucked the trend as a successful, one market local operation. Mr. Keller passed away from ALS nine years ago at the age of 62. Now Mr. Norton is gone now as well, a casualty of an accident where all we can prove at this point is that he was at fault, driving southbound in the northbound lanes of I-380. In addition to Norton, the accident claimed an innocent victim who was driving northbound
It wasn't supposed to end like this.
I remember well the 1979 sign-on of KRNA's 100 kW transmitter, living about 40 miles south of their tower site. KRNA was founded by a group of young Iowa City turks several years earlier, occupying the class A channel 93.5. A few years later, I heard the long standing tale that Rob Norton was the namesake of KRNA, as in "Kick Robby Norton's Ass!" certainly the product of a bar room brainstorming session.
Fast forward about twenty years, and I was working for a Des Moines traffic operation. One of our salespeople worked for KRNA and KZIA in the 90s, during the great consolidation boom. Norton, Eliot Keller and the rest of the ownership group had decided to sell the two stations, then had second thoughts. It was too late to save their baby, KRNA. But they were able to cancel the sale of the second station, KZIA, that the KRNA partners acquired several years earlier.
The decades fly away too fast. Keller and Norton expanded with a couple of other Cedar Rapids stations but never sought to own any properties elsewhere. They bucked the trend as a successful, one market local operation. Mr. Keller passed away from ALS nine years ago at the age of 62. Now Mr. Norton is gone now as well, a casualty of an accident where all we can prove at this point is that he was at fault, driving southbound in the northbound lanes of I-380. In addition to Norton, the accident claimed an innocent victim who was driving northbound
It wasn't supposed to end like this.