With a blast of Nirvana’s “All Apologies,” the 17-month effort to establish a talk station at New York’s 92.3 FM ended abruptly Thursday afternoon with the return of K-Rock — the station’s identity before Howard Stern departed for satellite radio in January 2006.

The new format is billed as “The Rock of New York,” and returns the station to the familiar musical ground of bands such as Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica and Linkin Park. The station will remain anchored by the oft-disciplined morning drive-time pairing of Gregg “Opie” Hughes and Anthony Cumia, said station general manager Tom Chiusano.

The Free FM format was billed as “Talk that Rocks” when it debuted with much fanfare, but it failed to generate good ratings. In the most recent Arbitron numbers, the station was not in the Top 20 overall in the nation’s largest radio market.

“Free had not hit the stride we had hoped for,” said Chiusano. “And K-Rock was still waiting there for us to grab it back. We know what we left behind, and the audience for the radio station (and its music) was significantly larger than the audience we had currently.”

Besides changing formats, the station swapped its call letters from WFNY-FM to its former WXRK-FM.

The format change ends a failed experiment that briefly converted David Lee Roth from rocker to radio host with a show that lasted barely three months after Stern left the CBS Radio station. Opie and Anthony quickly stepped in, doing three hours on Free FM before moving over to XM Satellite Radio for the rest of their show.

Two weeks ago, the station dumped “The Dog House with JV and Elvis” program after its co-hosts made a prank phone call rife with offensive Asian stereotypes. For its Memorial Day weekend launch, K-Rock will air without DJs, although a search for on-air talent would occur in the next few weeks, CBS Radio said.

Before its 2006 move to Free FM, K-Rock was a rock station for 20 years.

Credit: AP