WLUM-FM (102.1) and sister station WLDB-FM (93.3) are being sold to Christian radio chain K-Love Inc. in a $4 million deal<\/p>\n
Longtime Milwaukee alternative-rock station WLUM-FM (102.1)<\/a> will lose its format “in about a month’s time,” vice president of programming and operations Michelle Rutkowski said on the air Aug. 26.<\/p>\n The most likely successor: contemporary Christian music.<\/p>\n In a tearful midafternoon announcement, Rutkowski vowed that the station would spend the next few weeks looking back at the station’s biggest moments since the format was launched in 2006, and she promised WLUM would stay true to its roots in its final days, saying goodbye “in the only way we know how, with music and bad jokes.”<\/p>\n “In 2006, a bunch of weirdos launched a station in the hopes of creating something real,” Rutkowski said. “No schlocky shock-jock personalities, no consultants and, most importantly, no Nickelback. \u2026 We wanted a station run by people who lived and breathed this music, who and called this amazing city home.”<\/p>\n Rutkowski’s announcement, which also was posted on social media, came a little more than 24 hours after news surfaced that WLUM and sister station WLDB-FM (93.3) were being sold to Christian radio chain K-Love Inc. in a $4 million deal.<\/a><\/p>\n K-Love operates in more than a half-dozen markets in Wisconsin, including WLVE-FM (105.3), which is licensed to Mukwonago. K-Love’s name is on the FCC application posted Aug. 25; the network is owned by Educational Media Foundation,<\/a> a giant nonprofit Christian media company based in Franklin, Tennessee.<\/p>\n According to an Aug. 26 report on industry news site Radio Ink,<\/a> K-Love expects to complete the acquisition sometime during the third quarter of 2025.<\/p>\n In the Radio Ink report, a K-Love spokesperson confirmed that at least one of the Milwaukee stations would have a new format: \u201cWe are excited for the opportunity for K-LOVE Radio to have one of the best signals in Milwaukee and bring our vertical worship format, Air1, to the market for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n According to industry reports, Air1 is a contemporary Christian worship format that targets listeners in the 25-to-34 demographic; top artists in the format include Elevation Worship, Phil Wickham and Sons of Sunday. K-Love, with contemporary Christian music aimed at 35- to 44-year-olds, features artists like MercyMe, Third Day and Chris Tomlin. (Based on artist play on the formats’ websites, there’s some overlap.)<\/p>\n WLUM and WLDB are being sold by Milwaukee Radio Alliance, a partnership between All-Pro Broadcasting and Times-Shamrock. The alliance also owns oldies station WZTI-AM (1290), aka Fonz FM,<\/a> and contemporary country station Froggy MKE,<\/a> airing on 100.3 and 107.3 FM in Milwaukee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WLUM-FM (102.1) and sister station WLDB-FM (93.3) are being sold to Christian radio chain K-Love Inc. in a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":178871,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[647,648,8573,8571,171,425,666,728,6375,975,942,50,450,950,422,365,8577,80461,101205,983,4185,646,67,132,68,5534],"class_list":{"0":"post-178870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-affiliate","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-belief","11":"tag-christianity","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-local","14":"tag-local-affiliate-arts-u0026-entertainment","15":"tag-local-news","16":"tag-milwaukee","17":"tag-music","18":"tag-neutral","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-overall","21":"tag-overall-neutral","22":"tag-radio","23":"tag-religion","24":"tag-religion-u0026-belief","25":"tag-religious","26":"tag-religious-music","27":"tag-rock","28":"tag-rock-music","29":"tag-u0026","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-unitedstates","32":"tag-us","33":"tag-wi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115098964212080937","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}