The chicago-based Moody Bible institute was truly a pioneer in radio. They had to fend off NBC / RCA and the other early players in radio in the 1920s. Moody, along with the CFL labor union (WCFL) believed that radio should belong to the community, not just the money-grubbing evil capitalists. This was a fight they continued through the 1940s when the argument spilled over to the FM band, resulting in the non-commercial set aside from 88 to 92 megahertz.
Because moody did not have access to the AT&T coax cable that NBC controlled for its two networks, Moody’s Nationwide religious programming was distributed on records, so nothing was live. Moody had a number of owned and operated radio stations, but a lot of the Moody affiliates were independent of Moody.
Somewhere around four years ago, the Moody flagship station on the near north side of Chicago was changed from English to Spanish language programming. All of the AM Moody stations became Spanish at the same time. Last year, Moody filed a “transfer of control” for its stations indicated that there was enough of a change in the composition of their non-profit board to make it necessary to inform the FCC.
Today’s news is that they have given up on using AM radio, even though wmbi-am now has an FM translator. it was announced today that three of the four AM stations are being sold to raise cash. So far, there is no indication of who the buyer is. In the end, we had to kill AM radio to save it. Realistically, Moody Bible cannot compete with K-Love. They actually want people to understand what the Bible says, not just passively listen to happy “I love Jesus” songs
For those curious about their finance
Source:
https://www.allaccess.com/net-news/archive/story/187872/moody-radio-to-sell-three-am-stations
The backstory
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/january/moody-bible-president-paul-nyquist-resigns-julie-roys-fired.html