Northwestern Schools, as it was then known, entered the broadcasting business with the launch of KTIS-AM-FM in the Twin Cities on February 7, 1949. The construction of KTIS, costing $40,000, was entirely underwritten by the school's students. Its radio ministry soon expanded. On April 1, 1953, it bought KBOK in Waterloo, Iowa and changed its call letters to KNWS. Growth continued with the October 25, 1955, launch of Fargo's KFNW and its 1961 acquisition of KIHO in Sioux Falls, which became KNWC. Northwestern built FM stations in all three cities in 1965 and 1969. Northwestern acquired WRVB-FM in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1973, changing it to WNWC; the college would buy an AM station there in 1997. In 1983, KDNI in Duluth, Minnesota came to air; it was joined by KDNW, a second frequency, in 1992. Des Moines, Iowa, became part of Northwestern Media's footprint when radio stations KJJC and KLRX were bought out of receivership and became KNWI and KNWM in 2004. KJNW FM in Kansas City was acquired in 2013 from Calvary Bible College.
Station sales
In 2010, citing years of low listener support and the fact that it was subsidized by the rest of the network, Northwestern College closed WSMR in Sarasota, Florida, which it had built in 1996; the station was sold to the University of South Florida for $1.275 million and began broadcasting classical music. Between 2007 and 2012, Northwestern owned a third station, KFNL in the Fargo, North Dakota, area. The station was sold to a commercial broadcaster, Mediactive, LLC, in 2012 and is now KBMW-FM. Between April and August 2018, UNW briefly owned two secular stations, KDSN-AM-FM, in Denison, Iowa. UNW had acquired the stations in order to move KDSN-FM to another frequency and facilitate a signal upgrade for KNWI.
Expansions
Northwestern acquired KLBF near Bismarck, North Dakota, from the Educational Media Foundation in 2017; KLBF became a Faith station, making it the westernmost station in the Northwestern Media portfolio and one of its few markets without a Life station. EMF had previously donated WNWW, an AM radio station in Hartford, Connecticut, to the university in 2016. In 2018, Northwestern Media entered Omaha with its acquisition of KGBI-FM from Salem Media Group for $3.15 million. Northwestern Media made two major network acquisitions in 2019. The first came in July when the entire Refuge Radio network was donated to UNW. Refuge owned three full-power stations and 13 dependent translators in Minnesota, Iowa and South Dakota. The Refuge network was dismantled and almost all of its transmitters converted to repeat Life and Faith stations; former network key station WJRF in Duluth was taken silent, the two other full-power stations began simulcasting Life stations, and the translators were spread around the Life and Faith networks. On August 6, 2019, the Illinois Bible Institute announced it would sell its New Life Radio Network, a two-network radio ministry primarily broadcasting in Illinois, to the University of Northwestern. UNW will pay $9,901,558.34 to acquire its 13 full-power stations and eight translators. The acquisition will bring UNW's number of broadcast licenses to 81 in 10 states.
