St. Louis Radio: Buyer Hard To Find for KFNS

It was in July that legacy AM St. Louis sports-talk radio station KFNS 590 AM dropped local programming in a cost-cutting decision amid a search for a buyer. Now, nearly 3½ months later, owner Dave Zobrist said little progress has been made in trying to sell.

“There’s not much to report,” Zobrist said this week, adding that despite having hired a national broker, there have been “no serious leads.”

Stltoday.com reports he said he thinks a big hang-up is that the station still has 2½ years to go on a 10-year lease former owner Randy Markel executed with the landlord of the building in Kirkwood that houses KFNS’ studios and business operations.

“It’s pretty exorbitant,” Zobrist said. “That’s one of the reasons (the station) failed.”

After the local programming was pulled over the summer, Markel expressed interest in reinvesting in the operation that he considered unfinished business personally.

Dave Zobrist

“It’s the only thing that I started in that I didn’t finish,” Markel, a local businessman who was the longtime owner of the Chuck’s Boots operation, said then. “As people can testify, once I start something, I get it done.”

But his view has changed now.

“It’s out of sight, out of mind with me,” Markel said this week. “I had it all set before.”

Meanwhile, Zobrist said the plan is for KFNS to continue indefinitely by airing national shows from Fox Sports Radio as well as Illinois football and basketball contests plus some games played by the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies.

“I want to keep it sports,” Zobrist said while adding that his deal with Fox Sports Radio is flexible and would allow a return to local programming. If that happens, it could be with a gradual buildup, not what basically had been a sunrise-to-sunset lineup of the station’s own shows.

But Zobrist made it clear that he wants to sell the station.

“Maybe it's AM. Maybe people are waiting until after the election or the new year,” Zobrist said. “I have not had serious discussions; it’s been slow.”