Due south of Music City’s Lower Broadway epicentre is the city of Franklin, Tenn.
Here, a small FM translator has served listeners as a home for Educational Media Foundation‘s Worship Music-focused Air1 network, fed off of the HD2 signal of its big Class C2 home for the Christian Contemporary KLOVE network.
EMF is now selling the facility, and the buyer is likely all abuzz over the acquisition.
Tennessee for-profit corporation WYCQ Inc. has agreed to acquire W292ED at 106.3 MHz in Franklin from EMF.
The deal is valued at $30,000, and sees John Garziglia of Womble Bond Dickinson serve as the legal counsel for the purchasing party.
Who is that? While there is no station presently assigned the WYCQ call letters, astute market observers may recall the use of the call sign from 1980-1995 at what is today WBUZ-FM 102.9 in Nashville — the Rock station branded as “The Buzz.”
Hence, WYCQ Inc. is the licensee name for stations operated by Cromwell Group, the Nashville-based radio broadcasting company led by Bayard “Bud” Walters.
The sale ensures that Air1 will no longer air on 106.3 MHz, while W223BV at 92.5 MHz becomes the main metro signal for Air1. In Hendersonville, northeast of central Nashville, Air1 uses a directional translator at 100.3 MHz, so as to protect Class A WRLT-FM 100.1 “Lightning 100” in Nashville.
What will Cromwell likely do with W292ED? It could very well serve as a southern partner with W235BW at 94.9 MHz, the ESPN Radio affiliate serving Nashville.
This would widen the network’s terrain in the metro.
Cromwell also owns full-signal Sports WPRT-FM “102.5 The Game” and, via an FM translator, “Classic Hits 93.3” — running programming from Westwood One. Classic Hits is fed off of Class D daytimer WQZQ-AM 830 in Goodlettsville, Tenn.
