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ST. LOUIS — Troubled community radio station KDHX will soon go off the air if a sale of its license and broadcasting equipment is approved by a bankruptcy judge.

The station has agreed to sell most of its assets to K-LOVE, a national network of evangelical radio stations. KDHX would keep its studio and equipment, and intends to continue producing content online.

The base price is $4.35 million, which the station said in an announcement Tuesday is more than its market value. The price would increase to $4.85 million if the sale can be completed in less than six months, and to $4.6 million if it can be completed in six months to one year.

Board president Gary Pierson told reporters Wednesday that the deal would allow the station to continue operations online. The actual form that would take has not been determined, he said.

Double Helix Corp., which owns and operates KDHX, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 10.

The station is about $2 million in debt, said Robert E. Eggmann, a lawyer handling the station’s bankruptcy proceedings. The sale would pay off that debt and leave a surplus to continue operations online, he said.

About two-thirds of the debt is owed to two secured creditors, the Kenneth Kranzberg Revocable Trust and 3526 Washington.

The remaining $700,000 is owed to a group of unsecured creditors, including a $120,000 construction loan to a Lake Ozark resident, $79,000 to a local public relations firm and varying amounts to several current and former paid members of the staff.

Any of the creditors could file an objection to the proposed sale, and so could any interested parties, Eggmann said. He said he expects objections to be filed.

In addition, he said, other potential buyers could present different offers.

“By selling these assets now, (KDHX) can save over $500,000 in needed broadcast infrastructure repairs and instead can redirect that money toward future projects,� the station said in a statement on Tuesday.

“This sale is not the end of KDHX — it is a transformation that allows us to continue our mission in new and sustainable ways,� the statement said.

K-LOVE owns 589 stations across the country. None reaches the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ region.

KDHX has seen its viability collapse as an over-the-air radio presence since September 2023, when management fired 10 of its 80 volunteer on-air DJs in one day. At least 14 other volunteer DJs and an unknown number of behind-the-scenes volunteers resigned in solidarity over the following few weeks.

All of the 24 DJs who were removed or left the station had signed a letter of no confidence in the station’s executive director, Kelly Wells, earlier that summer.

Donations from listeners, which the station depended on to survive, immediately began to dwindle. Donations from businesses in exchange for on-air acknowledgement, which is called underwriting, similarly dried up.

As money grew ever tighter, the station stopped broadcasting live programming in February, relying instead on prerecorded shows from the past.

In documents filed to support the bankruptcy request, the station said its financial situation stemmed from “longstanding financial pressures (including pending litigation) and industry-wide challenges unique to publicly supported media.�

Pierson, the board president, said the station’s financial troubles began long before the DJs were let go. It moved from a small, somewhat ramshackle building in Tower Grove East to a larger facility in the Grand Center Arts District in 2013. That building turned out to be more expensive than the station could afford, he said.

However, the station was still raising enough money to meet its other expenses. That stopped when the DJs were fired. The number of listeners plummeted and donations slowed to a trickle.

“Boycotts are powerful things,� Pierson said.