Following a round of significant cuts earlier this year that saw the company eliminate the midday hosts at all four of its radio stations in Los Angeles and selling the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes to a group that relocated the franchise to Salt Lake City, Meruelo Media has made another significant move as it sells KWHY-TV Los Angeles to the Church of Scientology.
The Church’s Sunset Boulevard Broadcasting Corporation will pay $30 million for KWHY-TV, which currently carries Spanish Language programming. The deal includes a Channel Sharing agreement with Meruelo for Spanish Christian KBEH-TV Garden Grove. That station will continue to have access to 50% of the bandwidth on the digital Channel 4 signal shared between the virtual channel 22 used by KWHY-TV and the virtual channel 63 used by KBEH-TV. The Church of Scientology will also receive the rights to the KWHY call letters and website. It operates “Scientology Network” on DirecTV and multiple streaming platforms.
In addition to KBEH-TV, Meruelo Media retains Classic Hip Hop 93.5 KDAY Redondo Beach/KDEY-FM Ontario, Spanish Rhythmic “Cali 93.9” KLLI, Rock 95.5 KLOS, and Hip Hop “Power 106” KPWR Los Angeles.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com