This is a developing story.
The parent company of KINY and other Juneau radio stations has entered Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection proceedings via a petition filed this month, following the company’s placement into receivership in February. However, a local co-owner says the stations’ operations are continuing as usual and they aren’t directly tied to the cause of the proceedings.
Local First Media Group and six affiliates are facing the proceedings due to what the receiver, FTI Consulting Canada, states is a defaulted loan of nearly $8.2 million to a Canadian financial company. The Chapter 15 petition filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court seeks to prevent any actions involving Local First Media in U.S. courts that interfere with the receiver’s Canadian case.
The complex web of legal filings isn’t affecting operations at KINY and 10 other Southeast Alaska radio stations, said Cliff Dumas, president and majority shareholder of Frontier Media USA, part of the affiliated group involved with the proceedings.
“Nothing’s changing,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “We’re going to continue to do what we’re doing.”
Those operations include tower and other infrastructure upgrades, and evaluating the relocation of the station’s offices to a new location, Dumas said.
He also stated Frontier Media USA was not involved with the Local First Media Group loan, and efforts have been made last fall to argue “we should be carved out and should not be included” in the proceedings.
In a written statement provided to the Empire, Dumas disputed some aspects of the legal filings detailed in other media reports.
“The order claims that the stations are in default of a loan made by ATB Financial in Canada,” he wrote. “We strongly dispute this, and our U.S. and Canadian attorneys are working quickly to oppose the Chapter 15 filing. To clarify, BTC and Broadcast2Podcast were simply one of many guarantors of the loan.”
“Furthermore, Frontier Media was never a borrower or signatory to the loan and nothing that could jeopardize FCC-licensed operations was pledged as collateral. Importantly, federal law and public policy expressly protects our licenses and operations from foreign influence and our licenses and operations are shielded from foreign actions under U.S. law.”
Bryan Woodruff, president and CEO of Local First Media, was traveling and not immediately available for comment Tuesday.
The six affiliates of Local First Media Group in the case are Local First Properties Inc., BTC USA Holdings Management Inc., Local First Properties USA Inc., Alaska Broadcast Communications Inc., Broadcast 2 Podcast Inc. and Frontier Media LLC, according to court documents.
The default on the nearly $8.2 million occurred in November of 2023, and further defaults on forbearance agreements occurred in August 2024 and another in January 2025, according to the business publication TheStreet. FTI Consulting as the receiver, which has similar rights as a trustee in a U.S. Chapter 7 liquidation case, plans to sell Local First Media Group assets through a Canadian court proceeding to settle debts owed to creditors.
Early last year, the Juneau Empire’s parent company, Canada-based Black Press Media, filed for creditor protection in British Columbia due to a long-term drop in earnings and was sold in March of 2024 to Carpenter Media Group.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
