Another station is exiting to non-commercial world to earn its living the old fashioned way. The radio veterans at Keymarket, part of the Forever Broadcasting family of stations, is picking up an FM in the Wheeling WV area from Educational Media Foundation.
The buyers, headed by Donald J. Alt, Kerby E. Confer and Lynn A. Deppen, are buying WLVW-FM Moundsville WV under licensee name Keymarket License LLC. The price is $550K cash. The deal does not include the call letters, which will stay with EMF. The acquisition represents execution of an 8/29/09 purchase option entered into by the parties.
Keymarket has four stations in the market: 1340 WSTV-AM Steubenville OH, 1290 WOMP-AM & 100.5 WYJK-FM Bellaire OH and 105.5 WUKL-FM Bethlehem WV. Another station in the corporate portfolio, WOGH-FM, also attracts a few ears in Wheeling, despite the station’s Pittsburgh orientation.
WLVW is a Class A on 96.5 MHz with 1.9 kW @ 594’. Those parameters produce a signal contour that beams in from a point well south of Wheeling and extends far enough to encompass the entire municipality. It holds a CP that trades higher power – 2.5 kW – for a lower antenna HAAT – 453’. It does another thing of interest, however – it moves the transmitter location a little further to the north toward Wheeling.
Educational Media Foundation is the operator of the non-commercial contemporary Christian K-LOVE Network. It has been a prolific buyer of stations, but lately has been selling just a few of them off.
