Salem Media Group

History

In 1974, Atsinger (chief executive officer) and Epperson (chairman of the board) combined their radio assets to create Salem Communications. Beginning with stations in North Carolina and California, Atsinger and Epperson purchased station properties in Boston, San Antonio, New York City, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles and other markets, converting them to Christian talk stations. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they expanded formats to include contemporary Christian music (with most stations under this format branded as "The Fish"), news talk (branded as "The Answer"), Spanish-language Christian content, and business programming.

Many of Salem's stations are licensed to subsidiaries, organized by geographical area and media cluster as the company has acquired new stations and their previous licensees.

Salem Communications Corp acquired Twitter curation site, Twitchy.com. In January 2014, the company announced the acquisition of the assets of Eagle Publishing, including Regnery Publishing, Human Events, and RedState, and sister companies Eagle Financial Publications and Eagle Wellness.

On February 23, 2015, Salem Communications changed its name to Salem Media Group.

In 2015, Salem Media Group expanded their digital platform with acquisitions of several businesses and assets, including DividendYieldHunter.com, Stockinvestor.com; DividendInvestor.com, a Spanish Bible mobile app, along with its related website and Facebook properties; the DailyBible mobile app; the Daily Bible Devotion mobile app; and also, Bryan Perry's Newsletters.

In 2016, Salem Media Group continued to expand by acquiring the websites ChristianConcertAlerts.com, Historyonthenet.com and Authentichistory.com; as well as Mike Turner's line of investment products, including TurnerTrends.com; the Retirement Watch newsletter and website, Retirementwatch.com; and the King James Bible mobile application. Salem Media Group also acquired Mill City Press from Hillcrest Publishing Group, Inc.

In July 2017, Salem Media Group merged DividendYieldHunter.com and transferred all content into DividendInvestor.com.

In March 2019, political writer Raheem Kassam and lawyer Will Chamberlain purchased Human Events from Salem Media Group for $300,000.

In early 2021, the company moved most operations from the former main operations city of Camarillo, California to Irving, Texas, the same location of their long-owned radio station KLTY.

On November 8, 2023, Salem exited the Upstate market after it sold WGTK in Greenville, South Carolina and the Earth FM stations to the Educational Media Foundation, resulting in WGTK switching to the K-Love network and WRTH and WLTE switching to Air1 several days before.

In December 2024, it was announced that the company had sold all remaining Christian Contemporary stations to the Educational Media Foundation. The move was intended to help the company repay debt to investors. Educational Media Foundation began operating the stations on February 1, 2025.

In April 2025 Salem Media signed a deal with Donald Trump Jr. and Lara Trump that will see them both become stakeholders in the company. Salem Media acquired a 30 percent stake in MxM News, a mobile news aggregation app that is co-owned by Donald Trump Jr.

Radio stations

Stations are arranged in order by state and city of license.

Salem Radio Network

Main article: Salem Radio Network

Salem Radio Network is a satellite radio network serving general market News/Talk stations and Christian-formatted stations through affiliate partnerships serving more than 2,700 radio stations. The five major divisions are SRN Talk, SRN News, Salem Music Network, Salem Media Reps and Vista Media Reps and SRN Satellite Services.

• SRN Talk produces general market News/Talk shows featuring nationally syndicated hosts Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager, Sebastian Gorka, Brandon Tatum, and Charlie Kirk. It also produces Christian market programming featuring The Eric Metaxas Show.
• SRN NewsSRN News is a news source for conservative and Christian radio serving over 2,000 affiliates, and stations also take newscast branded by Salem's Townhall.com.
• The Salem Music Network has three satellite offerings – Contemporary Christian, Praise and Southern Gospel.
• Salem Media Reps specializes in Christian, family-themed and conservative media, radio, online, print and mobile.
• SRN Satellite Services provides satellite distribution and production services to over 70 organizations and ministries.

The satellite feed for Salem's general market programming can be heard on the CRN Digital Talk Radio Networks, on CRN3.

Salem News Channel

Salem News Channel is a 24/7 news television network founded in 2021. In June 2022, it was announced that the network reached an agreement with Innovate Corp. to launched on over-the-air television in 55 markets. The network is also available on watch on the website, the mobile app, Fubo, Sling TV, Apple TV+, Local Now, Xumo, Pluto TV, Google TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, and Vizio.

Salem Publishing

Salem's flagship publication, CCM Magazine, was in the Christian music industry for more than 25 years. Salem no longer prints CCM Magazine, but it still exists in an online-only format. Other magazine publications include Singing News Magazine, which discusses happenings involving the Southern gospel community.

Salem Author Services

Under the umbrella of Salem Author Service are Xulon Press, Mill City Press, and the websites Bookprinting.com, Bookediting.com, Publishgreen.com, and Libertyhill.com.

Xulon Press

Xulon Press (pronounced "zoo-lon") is a hybrid publisher owned by the Salem Media Group. In 2007 it claimed to be "the largest publisher of Christian books in North America", claiming more than 3,900 print-on-demand titles published by 2007. As of 2022, the website claimed Xulon Press published over 15,000 unique book titles and that more than a million copies of its books had been printed and sold. Its titles are mainly in the categories of Christian living, theology, church growth, discipleship, Bible studies, fiction, poetry, biographies, and others. For a fixed fee the press will publish an author's finished manuscript in paperback, hard cover, and electronic form. Once published, customers may order the book directly from online retailers, and retailers may order the book through distributors. According to their company contact page, the Xulon Press office is located in Maitland, Florida, United States.

Founded in 2000 by Christian author and publisher Tom Freiling. The company was originally incorporated in Virginia in May 2001 and then moved to Florida in May 2002. The principal "place of business" was still listed as Fairfax, Virginia until 2005, when the physical address was moved to Longwood, Florida. Xulon Press was bought in 2006 and is now a part of Salem Media Group. In 2016, Salem Media bought a Minneapolis, Minnesota, US-based self-publishing company Hillcrest Media and merged it with Xulon Press.

Salem Español Online

Salem owns a collection of Spanish language sites that provide a variety of Christian and family-friendly resources online. A few of those sites are CristoTarjetas.com; ElsitioCristiano.com; BibliaVida.com and LuzMundial.com.

Political activities

The founders of Salem Communications support various religious causes, and are noted for their role in spreading politically conservative opinion to areas dependent on radio for current events information. In 2005, Epperson was reported in Time magazine as one of the "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America". In 2004 he co-chaired "Americans of Faith", a religiously based Republican electoral campaign. Both founders have served on the Council for National Policy, a group of conservative influencers, intellectuals, donors, and former elected officials, and Epperson has served as president of the council. They gave $100,000 to the Bush presidential reelection campaign and $780,000 to the 2000 "California Defense of Marriage Act" (Proposition 22) ballot measure.

In October 2022, Salem, along with Dinesh D'Souza and True The Vote, was sued by Mark Andrews for defamation in Dinesh D'Souza's film, 2000 Mules, for which Salem was the distributor as well as the publisher of a book of the same name. In the film, D'Souza, without any evidence, falsely accused Andrews of ballot stuffing. In May 2024, Salem pulled the film and book from distribution and apologized to Andrews, claiming they had relied on representations made by D'Souza and True The Vote, and had never intended to harm Andrews. The suit is ongoing.

References

References

1. "Salem Media Group Company Profile".
2. "About Us – Salem Media Group".
3. "INSERTING and REPLACING Salem Media Group Announces Voluntary Delisting from the Nasdaq Global Market :: Salem Media Group, Inc. (SALM)".
4. "Contemporary Christian Music – Station Formats – Salem Media Group".
5. "History – Salem Media Group".
6. "SALM acquisition of Twitchy.com".
7. link. (September 24, 2015)
8. (February 23, 2015). "Salem Communications Corporation renamed to Salem Media Group". Radioandmusic.com.
9. (November 2, 2015). "Salem Media Group Announces Acquisition of DividendYieldHunter.com".
10. "StockInvestor.com".
11. "DividendInvestor.com".
12. (October 27, 2016). "Salem Media Group Announces Acquisition of Mike Turner's Line of Investment Products".
13. "Retirement Watch".
14. (July 11, 2017). "Welcome Dividend Yield Hunter Readers".
15. (March 1, 2019). "Breitbart alum to resuscitate Human Events". The Washington Post.
16. (2024-12-30). "Salem Media Group Sells Seven Stations To EMF; Repay All Debt With New Investor".
17. "Donald Trump Jr., Lara Trump strike deal with Salem Media".
18. "Station Lists – Salem Media Group".
19. (November 14, 2017). "SRN – About Us".
20. "Salem Radio Network – Salem Media Group".
21. "Salem News Channel {{!}} Salem Media Group".
22. (June 12, 2024). "Salem News Channel Launches Over the Air in 55 Television Markets".
23. (June 13, 2024). "Salem Breaks Into TV, As Its News Channel Debuts In 55 Markets.".
24. "How to Watch Salem News Channel".
25. (September 3, 2024). "Salem News Channel Launches on Pluto TV".
26. (September 3, 2024). "Salem TV Offering Ads Pluto To Planetary Distribution".
27. "Salem Media Group | Reaching audiences through radio, web and print media".
28. "Xulon Press – Salem Media Group".
29. (January 2008). "Xulon Press Releases". Xulon Press.
30. "About Xulon Press".
31. "Author bridges 'disconnect' of what people practice, preach". The Times and Democrat.
32. "Transmittal Letter".
33. "2005 Annual Report".
34. (June 7, 2023). "Salem Communications Announces an 8.8% Increase in Second Quarter 2006 Total Revenue – Salem Media Investor Center".
35. (May 22, 2006). "News Briefs". [[Publishers Weekly]].
36. (Aug 9, 2016). "Minneapolis self-publishing company Hillcrest Media bought by conservative Salem Media".
37. (February 7, 2005). "Stuart Epperson – The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America".
38. (November 22, 2022). "The Divided Dial: Episode 2 – From Pulpit to Politics – On the Media".
39. "The Council for National Policy: Behind the Curtain | Southern Poverty Law Center".
40. Berlet, Chip. (2018). "Trumping democracy in the United States : from Ronald Reagan to alt-right". Routledge.
41. (September 24, 2021). "One of the most secretive and powerful groups in GOP politics just had its cellphone numbers leaked. Here's what its members said about Trump 2024 when we started calling.".
42. "A Higher Frequency".
43. Wilkie, Christina. (2024-05-31). "Dinesh D'Souza election fraud film, book '2000 Mules' pulled after defamation suit".