Thursday, May 06, 2010

FCC approves KFUO sale

Bad news for St. Louis area fans of classical and jazz music: According to an item by Post-Dispatch music critic Sarah Bryan Miller on the Culture Club blog at STLtoday, the Federal Communications Commission has given final approval to the sale of radio station KFUO (99.1 FM). The blog post, in its entirety:
"The Federal Communications Commission has approved the sale of the license of KFUO-99.1 FM by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to Gateway Creative Broadcasting, which broadcasts “Christian contemporary” pop music as Joy FM. The sale is expected to be final in five days."
The sale means that, for the first time in at least 60 years, St. Louis will no longer have a radio station broadcasting classical music. It also means that Don Wolff, who has presented his long-running program "I Love Jazz" Fridays on KFUO since 2008, once again will be without a home on local broadcast radio. (Fortunately, Wolff's Internet radio show and the video version of I Love Jazz on cable network HEC-TV are both still continuing.)

UPDATE - 11:00 p.m., 5/7/10: Miller has added a follow-up post with reaction from the local arts community here, and a longer feature story with details on when the format change is expected to happen here. Also, the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra's Eddie Silva reacts to the news with a blog post here.

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