Half a century after Edward Atsinger and Stuart Epperson combined their first stations, Salem Media Group had grown into one of the largest radio station groups in the United States, its owned and operated stations spanning dozens of markets across Christian teaching and talk, conservative news and talk, and contemporary Christian music formats. The company added a national syndication arm, Salem Radio Network, a digital operation running more than one hundred Christian and conservative websites, and a 24 hour cable news channel launched in 2021, none of which existed when the company was still buying and converting individual stations one market at a time.
That scale carries a different set of consequences than a nonprofit ministry faces. Salem is a public company, formerly listed on Nasdaq and delisted in December 2023 for failing exchange requirements before moving to over the counter trading, which means its Christian format stations sit inside a business answerable to shareholders and disclosure requirements rather than to a denominational board or a donor base alone. In May 2024 the company pulled a film and book it had distributed and issued an apology after settling a defamation matter over false claims the material had made about a private individual, the kind of commercial liability event a purely donor-funded ministry does not typically face in the same form.
Salem's own stated mission describes "amplifying truth, faith, and self-governance through media" rather than framing its work in explicitly evangelistic terms, language that reflects what the company actually is: a commercial broadcaster whose stations carry a religious format alongside conservative political talk and contemporary Christian music, built and run as a business from its first combined stations in 1974 onward.