EMF KLOVE To Enter Detroit Market

FROM TOM TAYLOR’S NOW NEWSLETTER:

EMF’s latest score – “K-Love” parent buys Detroit’s “Praise 102.7” WPZR.

Detroit was one of the very few remaining major-market holes for Educational Media Foundation. (Boston’s another one.) Now Urban One sells its gospel Praise 102.7 WPZR to the not-for-profit contemporary Christian operator EMF for $12.7 million (plus three translators). Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins calls it “a good deal” for his company, since it “enables us to monetize an asset at a very attractive price.” Eyeballing the numbers, then-Radio One bought the Mount Clemens-licensed “Bear” WWBR/102.7 in early 1999, paying $27 million. The Class B signal (upgraded a while back) has been home to various formats, including adult contemporary, urban (as “Hot 102.7”) and in Fall 2011, gospel. Along with the check for $12.7 million, Urban One gains three Detroit-area translators from EMF, and it will stitch those together with one of its own translators to form “the Detroit Praise Network.” This is Alfred Liggins’ second Detroit sale in a year. He dealt WCHB/1200, then doing a mix of African-American talk and The Tom Joyner Morning Show, to Crawford for $2 million (April 13, 2017 NOW Newsletter). Selling “Praise 102.7” leaves Urban One’s Detroit cluster with urban AC “105.9 Kiss FM” WDMK and (leased from the Masons) urban “Hot 107.5” WGPR – plus the new Detroit Praise Network.