Authored By chloe.morrison

There’s a new locally owned and operated alternative radio station in town: 93.9 FM.

“Our main focus is on a lot of newer music, but we wanted to connect that with those songs that people did grow up with,” programming director/station manager Danny Howard said.

He described the music as “adult alternative” and said there is a lot of new content coming out of that genre.

In addition to new alternative music, including musicians listeners probably won’t hear on other local stations, they can also catch classics such as Nirvana, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and Neil Young.

The station is run by the same people who run Hits 96, Sunny 92.3 and Classic Country Q-97.3/99.3. Leaders have licensed the new station, which is available downtown, in East Ridge and a little in North Georgia.

And they are working hard to promote online streaming, Howard also said.

The station launched Nov. 14 and is playing 10,000 songs straight and commercial-free. After that, they will add some hosts, but not traditional talk radio types. There are no plans for a typical morning show.

Instead, they will likely hire someone to talk about the music.

“We are striving to put together a station that is very diverse [and] very eclectic,” Howard said.

When the commercial-free portion is over, the station will sell and air ads, but, ideally, they will generally be less intense and more organic-sounding, he also said.

The local stations’ parent company is Bahakel Communications, which is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Updated @ 9:04 a.m. on 12/5/16 to correct a typographical error.