Educational Media Foundation continues its growth in northern Illinois with the purchase of 92.5 WCPT-FM Dekalb IL from Newsweb’s WDEK Inc.
EMF will pay $1.6 million for the station which hits the western suburbs of Chicago and rimshots the Rockford market. It currently simulcasts Liberal Talk 820 WCPT Willow Springs/Chicago. EMF has yet to indicate which of its networks the station will rebroadcast as “K-Love” currently airs in Dekalb on a pair of translators while the 92.5 frequency would work to fill in regional gaps for that network beside 97.9 WCKL Chicago or “Air 1” WJKL Glendale Heights.
It also appears to have good coverage of a significant portion of the LaSalle/Peru metro–although maybe not the core cities. Perhaps more importantly, though, DeKalb County is apparently non-metro–which might help for ownership-cap purposes.
Northern Illinois and Chicagoland is overserved by K-Love and Air1. In the city of DeKalb, if 92.5 ends up as K-Love, there will be 3 full power FM’s and 2 translators that air K-Love. In the western burbs, the coverage would be similar. Parts of the northern burbs will have 4 full power FM stations that cover the area with a listenable signal (91.7, 92.5, 94.3 and 97.9).
That signal has been through so much since its days as part of the “92KissFM” trimulcast 20 years ago…