Educational Media Foundation has soft-launched a new Christian Classic Hits format under the name “K-Love Classics“.
The format, which began online-only in June, is focusing on Christian hits of the 1980s through early 2000s. It gives the group a third distinctive brand to go alongside Christian AC “K-Love” and Christian CHR “Air 1“. The company has begun rolling-out to a handful of stations including 88.1 WAIW Wheaton IL in suburban Chicago. That station had been carrying Air 1 until that format moved to 94.3 WJKL Glendale Heights after EMF acquired 97.9 WLUP Chicago (now WCKL).
K-LOVE Classics is our brand new radio stream that features your favorite Christian songs from the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. Take a walk down memory lane all day every day! https://t.co/dldL8013Wa pic.twitter.com/ixB7919o8S
— K-LOVE (@KLOVERadio) June 11, 2018
Eric Jon Magnuson 
rvafm 
Even though EMF has never been into HD Radio, this seems like it’d be a good format (and branding) to use for a subchannel. Also, this definitely isn’t the first time that EMF has tried out a third in-house format terrestrially; I vaguely remember its World Wide Worship, from the early 2000s. (While the unsuccessful God’s Country was carried on some EMF-owned stations, that format was produced by a third party.)
EMF does HD radio in several cities. KKLQ in Los Angeles is KLove but Air1 is on HD2. Same with KLSB in Ventura County and Denver’s KLDV, etc. An HD3 signal would lower the range somewhat for the stations but there are many many places where there are duplicate signals of Air1 or K-Love and that may be something for them to look into. For instance, 91.9 and 92.7 both air Air1 in eastern Ventura County, CA. Lexington, KY has 91.7, 95.3, & 89.9 all airing K-Love in the same area (give or take a few miles). EMF has a huge network with quite a few overlaps; ripe for a new format like this.
And straight from KLOVE Engineers, the complete set of stations are:
WAIW 88.1 Wheaton, Illinois
KLVB HD 3 99.5-3 Sacramento, California
KLXB HD 2 105.1-2 Cathedral City, California
K270AI 101.9 Cathedral City, California
KLVM HD 2 88.9-2 Santa Cruz, California
KKLQ HD 3 & KLSB HD 3 are slated for this as well but equipment needs to be ordered.
Thanks for the details on the complete list of Classics stations @Ben.
EMF/K-Love definitely increasing HD adoption, they just launched HD on WKVP Camden/Philadelphia last week (with Air1 on HD2).
Interesting that they don’t seem to be including their Spanish-language Radio Nueva Vida on their HD subchannels so far…
EMF doesn’t own Radio Nueva Vida.
Nueva Vida is independently owned; the official name of the licensee for its primary stations is the Association for Community Education. The flagship is KMRO (licensed to Camarillo, Calif.), and the group also directly owns some other stations in the region–perhaps most notably, San Diego’s heritage KSDO. Even though it’s indeed independent, it has had ties with EMF for quite some time; when the aforementioned God’s Country went under, most of the EMF-owned affiliates switched to Nueva Vida.
I stand corrected, EMF does NOT own Radio Nueva Vida. But EMF does own (a few/some/several) stations that air RNV (in particular WNVU in the Richmond, VA market; WQRP Dayton, OH; and KNVE Redding, CA).
Also, according to the HDRadio.com station guide, it appears that EMF does (or at least did) air RNV on KLVP-HD3 in Portland, OR, so it seems there is some precedence for that (though I realize some of that website’s data is outdated).