K-Love owns less than 10% of all radio stations. If they weren't allowed to own the stations, they could simply syndicate the format to stations owned by others. That's how some companies worked before the ownership laws were changed.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
K-Love Acquires B93.3 & FM102.1
- Thread starter lanceventa
- Start date
K-Love owns less than 10% of all radio stations. If they weren't allowed to own the stations, they could simply syndicate the format to stations owned by others. That's how some companies worked before the ownership laws were changed.
What's this fascination with "local" content? I don't get it.
Yeah, nobody complains when Jimmy Fallon airs on WTMJ and not a show hosted by a Milwaukee comedian.
Maybe secular stations wouldn't have to sell to K-Love if they were allowed to be part of a national network.
What law prevents them from being part of a national network?
The last time I heard of national networks was back when ABC Contemporary, NBC Red, and NBC Blue - if I remember correctly that ended in the late 60s early 70s.
There are secular stations that are part of a national network, such as Fox Sports Radio, Infinity Sports Radio, etc. Also CBS News Radio and ABC News Radio affiliates, etc.
ABC still offers national network news. So does CBS. Westwood One provides 24/7 music formats. Premier Radio Network proves a wide range of programming. There's also United Stations and several others.
Technically none, but the big players like iHeart and Audacy seem to be resistant to the idea of doing so. It's always half-measures like putting Bobby Bones on a lot of their country stations but not on all of them.
That's what a network is. iHeart owns Premier Radio Networks. Audacy recently started the Infinity Radio Network
Audacy Unveils Infinity Networks to Expand Radio Syndication - Radio Ink
Audacy used the first day of CRS 2025 to announce the launch of Infinity Networks, a new syndicated network services and content platform.
radioink.com
In the old days, ownership laws prevented companies from owning more than 5 stations. So they made syndication deals. Now they can either own or syndicate. The Bobby Bones show does both. It's carried on some iHeart stations, but also syndicated to country stations outside the company.
Quite often the decision to carry the network or do local programming has to do with sales and competition in a market. The stations do whatever brings in the most money. If they can make more with Bobby than with local, that's what they do.
Some people own one or none. I don't understand why I'm supposed to feel sorry for K-Love or any other big owner.
Who says you're "supposed to feel sorry?" It's a business. Nobody feels sorry for anybody.
The fact is they're spending money on radio. Everybody else has the same opportunity.
WTMJ provides significant local news coverage throughout the day, though. Looking at the station's website, they even offer a grocery price tracker. The station is clearly an asset to the community with its well-balanced mix of local and national content that appeals to a broad audience. It also employs local people, none of which K-Love does with it's 24/7 out-of-market feed of religion-indoctrinating music dogma.
According to CBS58 in Milwaukee, everyone at MRA is being laid on Friday. Both stations will change by Saturday. Obviously, there will be an LMA.
And B93.3 is going all-request until the end of the week.
And B93.3 is going all-request until the end of the week.
Last edited:
I don't know. Maybe in an age where social media and their obscure algorithms have taken money out of communities for questionably effective marketing, and made our culture just that much more angry, divided and generic, there's people with an interest in relating in the real world, building stronger local communities, making them better and touching some grass. Things radio at its best has always had a role in. Maybe we don't all want to be flooded with endless slop, much of it created artificially, and have connection to other human beings who believe in something greater than themselves and living in cyberland.
Maybe "local" matters because the place we choose to live isn't the same as the place others choose to live, and all of us chose those places for unique reasons - LA is not New York and Northampton, MA isn't Asheville, NC. They have their own politics, their own struggles, their own demographics and small businesses and creative culture.
What's all this fascination with "national" or "global?" Some people don't get that either.
There is no requirement for local content. In fact, as I have stated over and over, in most of the "free" world radio is done nationally. Whether it is Germany or Chile or wherever, the norm is a to have mostly national "stations" on many transmitters covering all or most of a nation or region.
And in those countries, radio has a much higher percentage of the total advertising pie, and the quality of programming... including more limited commercial time each hour... is much better.
In fact, with around 15,000 commercial and non-commercial stations, they own more like 5%.
And, unlike the bigger owners who may have 5, 6 or more stations in the largest markets, the K-Love group has only a couple of stations in each population area.
Oh, and many of the K-Love licenses are for translators, not "full class A, B or C" FM stations.
Okay, we get it that you are anti-religion and anti-faith-in-God. Free country and all that. But the majority of Americans believe in a "higher being"... so why is having a small percentage of radio stations owned by faith-based organizations bad?
I don't like the K-Love formats and their music. But I do admire the outreach they offer to listeners, such as call-in counseling and guidance and the activities that they sponsor or promote in many of their service areas.
I also like the fact that every station that goes "non-commercial" frees up market revenue for the remaining commercial stations to split. That is important when radio revenue is off, inflation adjusted, by nearly 70% in the last two decades.
I'm not anti-faith-in-God, but I am anti-huge organizations monetizing it. And I'm not anti-religion, but I am very much opposed to religious and political leaders using it to force their agendas, often based on their fake "values," on others.
K-Love has eliminated the jobs of a lot of good people while they continue to raise obscene amounts of money with their religion. These topics have been covered at length in other threads and I'm not going to say any more about it here since people's minds are already made up, but I don't appreciate you telling the community what my beliefs are when you don't even know me, so I want to set the record straight.
Golly gee! hasn't TV, for the last 70 years, been mostly national? Either network shows or syndicated ones, with the exception of local news on a few local channels, it's all been networked.
Go back to the 50's and 60's and people watched Johnny Carson and Steve Allen in "late nights" and not some local show with the sheriff or city council member.
For nearly 90 years, the FCC has forced stations to do "Public Affairs" and "News" and other stuff... but they could not force listeners or viewers to participate. And they did not.
The youngest two generations don't use TV or radio news at all. They use the internet. And how many of those web users look for local news... ever?
We had FCC chair Minnow calling TV a "vast wasteland" back in the 60's. Yet we had full days of original content that viewers wanted to watch in enormous numbers!