Baltimore’s WYPR-FM reaches west with purchase of station
WYPR-FM in Baltimore, Md., has agreed to purchase a station in Frederick, Md., from a religious broadcaster for $1.2 million.
Acquiring WJTM-FM from Joy Public Broadcasting Corp. extends WYPR into western Maryland and northernmost Virginia, though not Washington, D.C.
“That area, in terms of demographics and everything else, is a great public radio area,” says Marc Hand, managing director of Public Radio Capital, which brokered the sale on behalf of Joy Public Broadcasting.
The 4,000-watt Frederick station will primarily simulcast WYPR. Since it broadcasts at 88.1 MHz, also WYPR’s frequency, “it’s almost like a power increase” for WYPR, Hand says.
The acquisition is the first outside Baltimore for Your Public Radio Corp., which bought the station, then known as WJHU, from Johns Hopkins University in 2001.
“We make no secret of our intention to expand our signal statewide,” says YPR President Tony Brandon.
Brandon’s corporation will buy the station with existing funds and a line of credit from Baltimore’s Mercantile Safe Deposit and Trust Co.
Web page posted Feb. 22, 2008
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