Reorganized in 1993, KSUA now operates under the FCC non-commercial educational license public radio rules.

The commission has intentionally left "educational programming" undefined, describing public broadcasting instead in terms of what it is not: Public stations "are not operated by profit-seeking organizations nor supported by on-the-air advertising," with their "positive dimensions" determined by "social, political, and economic forces outside the Commission."

Because noncommercial stations have an educational mission, whose contours have been left unspecified, the FCC has never adopted public interest programming rules for noncommercial stations, such as requiring that a certain amount of airtime be dedicated to local news KSUA has won statewide and national broadcasting awards.

KUAC, the Fairbanks North Star Borough's public radio station, went on the air October 1, 1962, operating out of the Constitution Hall[2] studios KSUA now occupies.

In 1971, KUAC moved its radio and new TV broadcasting facilities into the lower level of the UAF Fine Arts Building.

[9] Playing what is referred to in the radio industry as the "album-oriented rock" or AOR format (focusing on 'deep albums tracks' in addition to more popular singles), KSUA-FM began as one of the few commercial college stations in the country, as are WHUR-FM at Howard University and WPGU at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

KSUA "Rock for the Great Land" quickly became the most popular station in the Greater Fairbanks area, with a format of playing a wide range of music[10] that included classic rock, Alternative, Heavy Metal, Industrial, traditional Chicago and Delta Blues, Grunge (well before the genre became widely recognized) and a host of Independent recording acts.

In 1987, commercial contemporary hit radio station KWLF began broadcasting; it then hired away Anderson and Evans.

With new competition and decline of the Alaskan economy during the same period, KSUA's stability as a commercial radio entity diminished.

As Fairbanks's radio market expanded with more new stations in the early 1990s, acute financial troubles began to plague KSUA.

During its downtime, SMI was dissolved, and the license for KSUA was transferred to the UA Board of Regents, to be held in trust for the students of UAF.

In September the Associated Students University of Alaska Fairbanks (ASUAF) bill, called "Governance Agreement For The KSUA Media Board", was passed.

The new KSUA came back on the air December 2, 1993, playing the same song the station had shut down with: Pearl Jam's "Alive."

In exchange, the university received a new antenna and transmitter system valued at $26,000, as well as $10,000 in additional payments—all extremely valuable in the face of budget cuts.