ST. LOUIS — A local Christian music station on Friday won at auction the rights to buy the license, broadcast tower and other assets of community radio station KDHX, a year-and-a-half after turmoil embroiled the beloved institution and just two months after it filed bankruptcy.
99.1 Joy FM (KLJY) bested the national Christian music network K-LOVE with a final bid of $8.75 million. K-LOVE’s top bid was $8.5 million.
“Ultimately, we determined (the Joy FM offer) was in the best interest of the bankruptcy,†said KDHX bankruptcy lawyer Robert E. Eggmann.
The winning bid was double the initial offer from K-LOVE, announced in March.
Both Joy FM’s and K-LOVE’s offers included an agreement to fund KDHX’s transition to a high-definition radio station and an internet station, where it would continue to play its traditional format of diverse styles of music, he said.
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No other groups participated in the auction, including a coalition of former DJs and supporters who would like to continue operating the station over the airwaves as it has always been, but with different management.
99.1 Joy FM is owned by Gateway Creative Broadcasting and broadcasts from Des Peres. It plays contemporary Christian artists such as Rend Collective, Hillsong Worship and Blanca.
Franklin, Tennessee-based K-LOVE is part of Educational Media Foundation, which owns more than 580 radio stations in every state across the country. Its stations play a single feed of contemporary Christian music, featuring many of the same artists heard on 99.1 Joy FM.
The auction is not the final step in selling the station, Eggmann said. Bankruptcy judge Kathy A.
Surratt-States will hold a hearing June 9 to determine whether or not to allow the sale. Interested parties can make objections to the sale as late as Monday.
Eggmann said he hopes that if the sale goes through it can be closed in about 6 months.
K-LOVE CEO Tom Stultz congratulated 99.1 Joy FM on its victory in the bidding war and said his company, which is a non-profit organization, will look for new opportunities to enter the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ market.
“We are a faith-based ministry. We negotiated in good faith a part of our belief that God wants us to have signals and stations in all the top markets in the country. We have that in all but about six, so ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ is very strategic for us,†he said.
Stultz now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, and commutes to Franklin, Tennessee, but he lived in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ in the late 1980s. He was marketing director for the Suburban Journals here.
A representative of 99.1 Joy FM did not respond to a request for a comment.
KDHX has been wobbling financially since September 2023, when it fired 10 of its 80 volunteer DJs after dismissing two others the month before. At least 14 more left in sympathy in the following few weeks, and some off-air volunteer staffers left as well.
Listenership dropped quickly, and many listeners withheld donations. Local businesses stopped underwriting the station — donating money in exchange for on-air mention.
Station management, in a concerted effort to bring more diversity to its broadcasts, filled most of the open slots with DJs from traditionally underrepresented ethnicities, races and sexual orientations. At one point, the station boasted that as much as 70% of the DJs were members of one or more underserved communities.
However, the new emphasis failed to replenish the coffers. The station dismissed virtually all of its staff and stopped broadcasting live content in January.
It filed for bankruptcy in March.
Storms rocked the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ area with a tornado damaging neighborhoods from Clayton to north ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½. View photos from the Post-Dispatch photographers during the week here. Video by Jenna Jones.
