Salem Media Group is leaving Music City and taking its “Fish” with it. According to sale documents filed with the FCC, the Christian broadcaster is divesting its three Nashville signals carrying 94 FM The Fish to Educational Media Foundation along with one Honolulu FM.
The $7,000,000 sale comes as another major divestiture for Salem, as they seek to return to the right financial footing.
The Middle Tennessee assets include WBOZ in Woodbury, WFFH in Smyrna, and WFFI in Kingston Springs, which carry the three signals sharing a simulcast of 94 FM The Fish. 4,331 miles away on the island of Oahu, KAIM’s 95.5 The Fish is also a part of the transaction.
Pending FCC approval, WBOZ, WFFH, and WFFI would join EMF’s other Nashville-area station, WLVU, which broadcasts the Contemporary Christian K-Love format. EMF’s K-Love studios and offices are located nearby in Franklin, TN. EMF has yet to reveal how it will use the stations.
The Nashville market sale follows Salem’s shedding its Regnery Publishing arm to Skyhorse Publishing, amid a 17.5% revenue drop in its publishing segment for Q3, influenced by a 19.2% sales decline from Regnery. This sale follows the $30 million divestiture of Salem Church Products to Gloo, LLC, marking another strategic step in Salem’s broader financial restructuring efforts.
Salem voluntarily delisted from the Nasdaq Global Market in January and halted its reporting obligations, aiming to save on financial resources by reducing costs related to compliance and reporting.
This move came shortly after Salem secured a $26.0 million asset-based revolving credit facility with Siena Lending Group, replacing its prior agreement with Wells Fargo Bank.
Salem Media CEO David Santrella stated, “Salem remains steadfast in our commitment to paying down debt and reducing our overall leverage. The sale of these radio stations helps achieve those goals. At the same time, we are focused on the stations staying in mission format. We are happy to be working with our good friends at EMF to continue impacting lives through music. We are grateful for our staff at these stations that have worked tirelessly over the years.”
Salem expects to close on the sale of these stations sometime in the latter half of Q2.
104.1 The Fish in Portland tended to do a little better music than K-LOVE and SPIRIT 105.3 and sometimes Way-FM after the pandemic (primarily starting around 2022) when they got softer. KFIS sometimes played songs that 105.3 in Seattle would not play (like Apollo LTD Sunday Morning Feeling for a while) and occasionally a song K-LOVE would not play (like Feels To Be Free by Steven Malcolm f/Santcus Real). KFIS is gone too unfortunately and it seemed like a good station for those who did not generally like rap (even though both Way FM and The Fish likely played a little rap) but liked music that was better than K-LOVE same with Way FM from like 2012-2021 around (though it was a little younger based and sometimes better than The Fish too).
Not happy about 94 thefish leaving Nashville. The new station plays worship music that reminds me of elevator music for Christians. Sorry. Not a fan. I miss the radio personalities that make the station come to life/real people doing life together for those of us invested in Nashville. I’m okay with change but this was not a “good” change for us.
Yeah, they should have kept Air 1 Christian CHR/CCM-based music and the music would be far better and would have some of the same songs as “The Fish” and probably even better music than The Fish (with some of the songs) as they played the funner hits. The worship music seems to make people sleepy and some people did not like the change.
I love The Fish! I hate that they are not going to broadcast anymore….they played better music than k-love as I tried them too.
104.1 The Fish in Portland tended to do a little better music than K-LOVE and SPIRIT 105.3 and sometimes Way-FM after the pandemic (primarily starting around 2022) when they got softer. KFIS sometimes played songs that 105.3 in Seattle would not play (like Apollo LTD Sunday Morning Feeling for a while) and occasionally a song K-LOVE would not play (like Feels To Be Free by Steven Malcolm f/Santcus Real). KFIS is gone too unfortunately and it seemed like a good station for those who did not generally like rap (even though both Way FM and The Fish likely played a little rap) but liked music that was better than K-LOVE same with Way FM from like 2012-2021 around (though it was a little younger based and sometimes better than The Fish too).
I don’t think they ever figured out their identity. The programming and direction came across as compromising & money grabbing. Too bad – they had a lot of potential.
Another commercial radio station succumbs to the EMF Borg!
Tbh. EMF should not be buying up other CCM stations. They should only buy up the secular ones for areas without a K-LOVE/Air 1 and not take away local Christian music stations (unless
a company like Salem has debt and has to sell the stations like what happened with “The Fish” which is an exception). However, it is nice to have more than 1 option for the same music for the market, some may say the more the better though I think it probably shouldn’t be more than 3-4 stations so Christian music doesn’t get shoved down people’s throat for those who feel uncomfortable with it.