Salem's OnePlace.com gobbles up Crosswalk
Megabroadcaster Salem Communications, which owns (or is about to own) 83 radio stations, CCM communications (which publishes Christian magazines), and many other Christian media properties, is about to own one more: Crosswalk.com. Assuming Salem's board and Crosswalk's shareholders approve the action, Crosswalk will operate under Salem's OnePlace.com (which mainly offers streaming audio from Christian radio programs). "This acquisition will help us better deliver our ministries' and advertisers' messages to the faith-based audience, and gives us the economies of scale to take advantage of the Internet's continued growth," Salem president and CEO Ed Atsinger said in a press release. It's unclear from both the Salem and Crosswalk press releases exactly how OnePlace.com and Crosswalk.com will work together, but there are clues. Crosswalk president Scott Fehrenbacher says Salem will "leverage the value of the Crosswalk brand," and Atsinger says Salem will leverage "the operational infrastructure of our existing Internet business OnePlace.com," which suggests that the company may use the infrastructure of OnePlace and the URL and branding of Crosswalk. Who knows? When LifeAudio/Lightsource.com bought Christianity.com, they scaled down the latter's operations but kept both sites running.

In related news, USA Today reports on the continued woes of bankrupt Beliefnet. "The staff of 69 is down to 12," writes Janet Kornblum. "Even the janitors are gone; staffers take turns cleaning the bathrooms." The site has cut back radically on its original content, but hopes visitors won't notice (we notice). Site founder Steven Waldman blames much of the site's problems on its efforts to build a massive ...