In 1974, Atsinger (chief executive officer) and Epperson (chairman of the board) combined their radio assets to create Salem Communications. Beginning with stations in North Carolina and California, Atsinger and Epperson purchased station properties in Boston, San Antonio, New York City, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles and other markets, converting them to Christian talk stations. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they expanded formats to include
contemporary Christian music (with most stations under this format branded as "The Fish"), news talk (branded as "The Answer"), Spanish-language Christian content, and business programming. Many of Salem's stations are licensed to subsidiaries, organized by geographical area and media cluster as the company has acquired new stations and their previous licensees. Salem Communications Corp acquired Twitter curation site, Twitchy.com. In January 2014, the company announced the acquisition of the assets of Eagle Publishing, including
Regnery Publishing,
Human Events, and
RedState, and sister companies Eagle Financial Publications and Eagle Wellness. On February 23, 2015, Salem Communications changed its name to Salem Media Group. In 2015, Salem Media Group expanded their digital platform with acquisitions of several businesses and assets, including DividendYieldHunter.com, Stockinvestor.com; DividendInvestor.com, a Spanish Bible mobile app, along with its related website and Facebook properties; the DailyBible mobile app; the Daily Bible Devotion mobile app; and also, Bryan Perry's Newsletters. In 2016, Salem Media Group continued to expand by acquiring the websites ChristianConcertAlerts.com, Historyonthenet.com and Authentichistory.com; as well as Mike Turner's line of investment products, including TurnerTrends.com; the Retirement Watch newsletter and website, Retirementwatch.com; and the
King James Bible mobile application. Salem Media Group also acquired Mill City Press from Hillcrest Publishing Group, Inc. In July 2017, Salem Media Group merged DividendYieldHunter.com and transferred all content into DividendInvestor.com. In March 2019, political writer
Raheem Kassam and lawyer Will Chamberlain purchased
Human Events from Salem Media Group for $300,000. In early 2021, the company moved most operations from the former main operations city of
Camarillo, California to
Irving, Texas, the same location of their long-owned radio station
KLTY. On November 8, 2023, Salem exited the
Upstate market after it sold
WGTK in
Greenville, South Carolina and the
Earth FM stations to the
Educational Media Foundation, resulting in WGTK switching to the
K-Love network and WRTH and
WLTE switching to
Air1 several days before. In December 2024, it was announced that the company had sold all remaining Christian Contemporary stations to the Educational Media Foundation. The move was intended to help the company repay debt to investors. Educational Media Foundation began operating the stations on February 1, 2025. In April 2025 Salem Media signed a deal with
Donald Trump Jr. and
Lara Trump that will see them both become stakeholders in the company. Salem Media acquired a 30 percent stake in MxM News, a mobile news aggregation app that is co-owned by Donald Trump Jr. == Radio stations ==