According to PD Rick Thomas, 'Pa’ina’s mission to is to have fun and play the reggae and island jams people really want to hear.' Thomas launched with Big Teeze as station voice with Imaging Director John James providing initial launch package With this move, KQMQ will face competition from two other Hawaiian Contemporary outlets that also feature Reggae music in their presentation, KDNN and KCCN. February 6 was also Marley's birthday, which made this flip more interesting. This was preceded by what proved to be a decoy media release that the new format would be Traditional Hawaiian 'Nā Mele 93.1,' a brand that is used at parent company Ohana Broadcasting's other outlets in Hawaii. On February 4, 2011, KQMQ dropped their Top 40/CHR format and began stunting with all- Bob Marley music during the weekend until February 7, 2011, when it flipped to a format that consists of Reggae and Contemporary Hawaiian music, billing it as '93.1 Da Pā'ina.' The move to a Reggae-based format make this the second of its kind in the United States. In 2005 they would return to Mainstream Top 40 with a Modern AC lean as '93.1 The Zone.' During their tenure its listenership was 3.9 percent of Hawaii's listeners. In 2000 it would switch to an All-80s & 90s format, as their format would move over to sister station KDDB. It was the first station in Hawaii to include local contemporary music in its regular play list, thus giving exposure to groups like Kalapana, Cecilio and Kapono, and Keola and Kapono Beamer.īy the 1980s it inherited the Top 40 format from KKUA and would continue it into the 1990s. Among the other DJs were Ron Wood, Bob Cole, Noel Grey. Gene Davis was Program Director, Lee Abrams was consultant.

The station, which signed on the air on October 1, 1967, originally was an AOR outlet in its early days after it was acquired from Cecil Heftel and began broadcasting 'album cut' music around 1976.

93.1 da paina radio