Behind all the laughs and thrills WREN aired to countless Philco radios around the region, however, the station had a long-running dispute with the University of Kansas’ KFKU. It was not uncommon for stations to share time on a frequency in the early days of broadcasting and in 1928 WREN was directed to split the day with KFKU, the university’s station which had gone on the air four years earlier in 1924. At the time this was beneficial to both stations: WREN avoided sharing time with commercial competitor WIBW (Topeka) and KFKU got access to WREN’s more powerful transmitter. WREN’s dial position subsequently changed from AM 1180 to AM 1220 and they moved to new facilities at the former YMCA building in downtown Lawrence.

The decision to split time eventually proved to be a poor one for the university; the agreements between the two stations were not written down in detail and WREN officials used this to their advantage in claiming the best broadcasting times. Conflicts emerged almost immediately after WREN became an affiliate of NBC. As part of the affiliation contract WREN was obligated to carry certain hours of network programming. To accommodate this, KFKU was left with unattractive time slots outside prime radio listening hours. Further, they never got more than one full hour at a time. The problem never was resolved to the satisfaction of KU.

During the depths of the Great Depression in the early 1930s radio stood out as a booming enterprise. Station owners including R. C. Jackman incorporated the station as the WREN Broadcasting Company in 1934. Soon after, in 1936, the company moved the station’s transmitter to Tonganoxie and opened a studio in Kansas City’s Bellerive Hotel to tap into the larger market. During this period the Kansas City Star Company, operators of Kansas City’s NBC Red Network outlet WDAF, attempted to buy WREN. The FCC nixed the deal stating it would put the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) affiliate KMBC at a serious competitive disadvantage and reduce overall competition in the area.

WREN’s frequency was moved yet again in 1941 to AM 1250. The next year, 1942, the station began relocating some broadcasting facilities to Topeka for “network commitments,” according to Jackman. The station left Lawrence entirely for Topeka in 1947 leaving the city without its own commercial station until the arrival of KLWN in 1951. WREN finally left the air under financial strain in 1987, but for sixty years Lawrence’s original hometown station entertained and informed the region’s listeners.