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K-Love Acquires B93.3 & FM102.1

Certainly could be just WLDB staff. If I had to guess, and it's just a guess...I would wager 93.3 becomes K-Love (possibly even early through an LMA) and 102.1 will be Air 1.
 
davideduardo said:
And they "covet" stations in any big population area they don't already cover. It's part of their mission statements.
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10th Commandment (KJV Bible):
“You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.”

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's station?
 
Just chiming in here briefly to note that David's comment about the balance between translators and full-power signals for K-Love was true 20 years ago, but not so much these days. While the company still has a bunch of translators on its books, it's on full-power FM signals now just about everywhere that matters. Many of the translators that used to be needed for K-Love service have been repurposed for secondary networks or are used as part of programming swaps with other broadcasters.
 
davideduardo said:
Remember, they buy based on a formula of "listeners covered" and not things like "markets" and "revenue". They have a rather precise amount they will pay for listener coverage.
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According to a broker contacted by Inside Radio, EMF actually underpaid for the stations:

Broker Bob Heymann, managing director of Media Services Group’s Chicago office, says the Milwaukee Radio Alliance sale price equates to a per population (60 dBu contour) price of $1.20 for each of the two stations. He says that is one of the lowest for a big market commercial station in recent memory, pointing out EMF’s recent deal to buy classic rock “98.7 The Shark” WPPB Tampa for $8 million had a $2.70 per population price tag. And from a historical perspective, when he brokered the sale of WNIB-FM Chicago (97.1) in 2001 for $165 million, the price per pop was $23.60.
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TheBigA said:
According to a broker contacted by Inside Radio, EMF actually underpaid for the stations:
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But if there was no other willing buyer with available funding, then that is the only price there is.
 
fybush said:
Just chiming in here briefly to note that David's comment about the balance between translators and full-power signals for K-Love was true 20 years ago, but not so much these days. While the company still has a bunch of translators on its books, it's on full-power FM signals now just about everywhere that matters. Many of the translators that used to be needed for K-Love service have been repurposed for secondary networks or are used as part of programming swaps with other broadcasters.
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I agree that the percentage of translators is much lower than it was decades ago. But, compared to the other leading station owners, it still has a very significant percentage of translators among its total station count. Of course, your point about moving their lower tier formats to translators is also a good one.
 
secondchoice said:
Unless there is profanity, the FCC doesn't care what format you run. Their advertisers might have some input into what they run.
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There had been issues with talent playing profane content right near/after the safe harbor time and that the local grumps were monitoring and calling the station with timestamps and such at the time to get revved up for a license challenge. I'm recalling this as a 14 year-old north of Milwaukee where I could only glean the Journal for any radio gossip at the time, so memory can be faulty/embellished of course; I just remember how lame it was to have a station suddenly pull away from one format and veer hard-left into a new one to 'shut up the olds', as it were.

And I do know from experience that EMF has wanted to cover the southern part of the GBA market and the northern part of Milwaukee (Ozaukee/Sheboygan/Fond du Lac/Washington) which doesn't get a real good K-LOVE signal from either station network the Sheboygan and FdL translators (WPFF is north of Sturgeon Bay and they inherited that station's translator network, while WPKR is west of Luxemburg, both of which are well north of Scrays Hill with little FdL/Sheboygan coverage. WLVE is an outlier in Waukesha County rather than the northside tower farm and fades north of Port Washington). WLDB is with the Milwaukee PBS tower, WLUM is on the Weigel tower; both are the sweet spot to cover the northern part of the market and cover it well. EMF is happy with translator coverage, but if not for WHHT's restrictions across the lake, they would have long wanted to locate WLVE in Milwaukee proper.
 
davideduardo said:
I agree that the percentage of translators is much lower than it was decades ago. But, compared to the other leading station owners, it still has a very significant percentage of translators among its total station count. Of course, your point about moving their lower tier formats to translators is also a good one.
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Your response raises an interesting question with me. Is EMF the organization with the most translators nationwide? For some reason, I had thought that that distinction had belonged to CSN or AFA. (For a while, I thought Family Radio was in the running for that as well but that organization, after its founder's death, went on a selling spree so I believe it's no longer in the hunt in that category.)
 
ted chittenden said:
Your response raises an interesting question with me. Is EMF the organization with the most translators nationwide? For some reason, I had thought that that distinction had belonged to CSN or AFA. (For a while, I thought Family Radio was in the running for that as well but that organization, after its founder's death, went on a selling spree so I believe it's no longer in the hunt in that category.)
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I can't answer, as I did not renew my old BIA subscription (in the 5-figure range). Perhaps Scott has a current count.
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Religious broadcasters have always been opportunists seeking the paths of least resistance to saturate the airwaves with their content. They did it on shortwave, then AM radio, then FM translators, and now they're systematically taking out some of the best and most powerful FM signals.
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We’ve said this on these boards before, but it bears repeating:

If you want to know what the future of FM radio sounds like, just listen to what AM radio has become.

If you want to know what the future of AM radio sounds like, just listen to what shortwave has become.

If you want to know what the future of shortwave sounds like, simply turn off your radio.
 


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