Backyard Broadcasting has elected to exit the Jackson MS market, and taking the opportunity to move in will be noncommercial religious operator Educational Media Foundation. It will be getting two FMs in the unreserved portion of the FM band.
The stations are WWJK-FM Jackson and WRXW-Pearl.
For the record, the reserved portion consists of dial points to the south of 92 MHz, from 91.9 to 88.1, which is “reserved” for noncommercial use. In the parched deal-making environment of the past several years, more and more turf in the unreserved band has been going to noncoms, and EMF has been among the most enthusiastic buyers.
EMF is a California-based specialist in Contemporary Christian programming, sending its K-Love and Air 1 formats to points across the nation.
Backyard, headed by Barry Drake, will earn $2M for the stations. There will be an escrow deposit of $100K, another $575K paid at closing and a note for $1.325M.
WWJK is the prime property of the two – it’s a full Class C on 94.7 MHz with 100 kW @ 1,115’. WRXW-FM brings a Class C3 signal into the market on 93.9 MHz with 25 kW @ 328’. Its primary contour gets to most of the market, and is oriented to the eastern side.
