It’s a 6kw FM serving an area south of Louisville, Ky., operated by Steve Newberry‘s Commonwealth Broadcasting, serving Fort Knox, Elizabethtown and Lebanon Junction.
Soon, this station will no longer be the home of “KMO.” That’s because Newberry has agreed to sell the property. The buyer? Just like Tuesday’s Eastern Washington deal, it involves the No. 2 licensee of FMs in the U.S.
That’s because WKMO-FM 99.3 is being sold by “Elizabethtown CBC Inc.,” the licensee name for the Commonwealth-run station.
The buyer is Educational Media Foundation, operator of ubiquitous Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) non-commercial network KLOVE and Worship Music sibling Air1.
A $410,000 purchase price has been agreed upon, with a 10% deposit made by EMF, led by Bill Reeves, to Commonwealth.
Bob Silverman of Womble Bond Dickinson served as Commonwealth’s legal counsel in the transaction, while Newberry tells RBR+TVBR that Ed Henson was his company’s advisor on the transaction.
While EMF is largely expected to place KLOVE on WKMO as it converts the property to non-commercial status, Newberry also shares exclusively to RBR+TVBR that Commonwealth is moving the WKMO programming and its intellectual property to a different facility, thus keeping the heritage Country station in operation.
“The product will continue serving its listeners,” Newberry says, adding that the transition to WKMO’s new home at 101.5 MHz is already in progress. This means the WVKB call letters have been retired, as has the station’s former Adult Contemporary programming.
The 99.3 MHz frequency will now have the WLEZ-FM call letters.
