“SCRATCH AND WIN” PASTOR SELLS FM TRANSLATOR FOR $1.9 MILLION • UPDATE ON CONFERENCES

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Pastor Clark Parrish

Pastor Clark Parrish knows how to make money in the radio biz. 

Parrish doesn’t operate stations, he acquires and sells their FCC licenses, a practice known as “trafficking.”

Pastor Clark hit the jackpot last week. 

Clark's company, Edgewater Broadcasting, sold FM translator W256CL 99.1 FM, licensed to Park Forest, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, to Fred Weinberg, CEO of USA Radio Network [link].

The translator became valuable after Edgewater received a FCC construction permit to relocate the translator to the Willis Tower in downtown Chicago. 

As you can see in the coverage map on the right, 99.1 FM will put a strong signal into the heart of Chicago. 

The highly directional signal has the potential to reach three million people.

Welcome to the unique world of religious noncommercial radio where trafficking in licenses is often a bigger deal than saving souls.

Edgewater is well known to serious broadcasters and LPFM planners for gumming up the process by acquiring licenses for stations and translators they never intended to build.

By 2003, Edgewater had acquired the FCC licenses for over 1,200 FM translators and full-power stations. Since then, around 500 of the licenses have been sold.

Edgewater acquired many of the licenses during FCC spectrum auctions or by purchasing construction permits for un-built facilities. Most of the translator frequencies were bought for pennies on the dollar.

After acquiring the licenses, Edgewater filed petitions with the FCC to upgrade the facilities. Then the licenses are sold or donated to other nonprofit organizations for the tax credits.

As we first reported in October 2018 [link], Edgewater has been making big bucks trafficking licenses. According to IRS 990 filings, Edgewater had a $1.8 million profit in 2016.

Weinberg and USA Radio Network must have a lot of extra cash because the day after they purchased the Chicago translator, they bought a translator with the potential to reach most of Philadelphia for $1 million.