Board of directors to debate KFUO sale this week

"The board of directors of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod will debate selling radio station KFUO-FM when it meets this week, with the fate of classical music broadcasting in St. Louis hanging in the balance," begins the story by Sarah Bryan Miller in this Sunday's edition of the Post-Dispatch.

"The leading candidate to buy KFUO (99.1 FM) appears to be Joy FM, a listener-supported Christian contemporary station," the story continues. "A sale to Joy would rebuff a group of local civic leaders who raised money to buy the station and keep it playing classical music...The church committee charged with studying a sale will meet this week, before the full board's regular quarterly meeting Thursday."

While the sale and conversion of KFUO to another format would indeed be a mortal blow to classical music broadcasting in the St. Louis area, local jazz fans have an interest in the status quo, too. That's because KFUO also is the home of longtime St. Louis DJ and jazz advocate Don Wolff's "I Love Jazz" program, which moved to Fridays on KFUO last year after a long run on Saturday nights on KMOX (1120 AM).

Though she neglects to mention Wolff's program, Miller's article otherwise does a good job of chronicling the reactions and viewpoints of many of the interested parties, including the Lutheran Church, which owns KFUO; the St. Louis Symphony, which has a contract with KFUO to broadcast certain concerts; and the group of classical music supporters who are trying to purchase the station with the intent of preserving the current format. Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE - 11:00 p.m., 8/17/09: Since filing the story linked above, Miller has added a couple of blog entries on the KFUO situation: one with a reader poll, and another with some audio files of the prospective purchasers discussing their plans.

(Edited 8/18/09 to fix some formatting problems.)