Hope Media Group
Hope Media Group is a nonprofit Christian media organisation headquartered in New Caney, Texas, in the Houston area. It is the home of KSBJ, the Houston contemporary Christian station around which it was founded in 1982 as the KSBJ Educational Foundation, and — since a 2022 merger with WAY Media — of the national WayFM network, the Spanish-language Vida Unida network, the worship service Worship 24/7 and the digital hip-hop and pop outlet NGEN Radio. The group states its mission plainly: to engage people to love Jesus, serve others and spread hope, through radio, digital media, events, podcasts, streaming platforms and mobile apps.
Few American Christian broadcasters have changed as much in the past decade. In that span the organisation renamed itself, moved its youth format to digital, launched a Spanish-language network on its former frequencies, merged with a network of similar size and heritage, and built a new 50,000-square-foot headquarters. Each step is documented in industry and ministry coverage.
Founding as the KSBJ Educational Foundation
The organisation's roots lie in a single Houston station. Ministry sources date the KSBJ Educational Foundation to 1981, formed to connect people more deeply to God, and its station KSBJ signed on in 1982 — co-founder Buddy Holiday, who put the new station on the air that year, retired in 2001 and died on September 8, 2017; he was inducted posthumously into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2023. From that single signal, 89.3 KSBJ grew into the flagship of the ministry and, by the group's own description, the largest single-market Christian radio station in the world, sharing the gospel through Christian music, broadcasting education, events, mentoring and prayer initiatives.
For nearly four decades the foundation and the station were effectively one identity: KSBJ was both the organisation and its only major brand. That changed as digital and additional radio brands accumulated around it.
NGEN Radio and the youth audience
The group's clearest early move beyond its flagship was NGEN Radio — Now Generation Radio — a Christian hip-hop and pop service launched on November 18, 2010, playing artists associated with Christian hip-hop and pop alongside remixes of contemporary Christian acts. NGEN began as a largely digital and HD service. In February 2016 the foundation announced it would buy KUHA, the University of Houston's former classical station, for ten million dollars, giving NGEN a city-grade analogue FM signal for the first time; the station, renamed KXNG, launched the format on 91.7 FM on August 8, 2016.
The experiment in terrestrial youth radio ended five years later. In 2021 Hope Media Group announced NGEN would become exclusive to digital platforms, and on November 8, 2021, NGEN moved to streaming and app distribution only.
Vida Unida: a Spanish-language turn
The frequencies NGEN vacated were not sold or silenced. The group had registered the Vida Unida trademark at the end of August 2021, and on November 10, 2021, stations including KHVU in Houston and its sister signals flipped to Vida Unida, a Spanish-language Christian adult contemporary format. Vida Unida has since become one of the group's principal networks, serving some of the nation's largest Spanish-speaking markets and expanding further — including, in 2026 announcements, into Southwest Florida on a Fort Myers translator, alongside Worship 24/7.
The pivot is significant in American Christian radio: a heritage English-language broadcaster redeploying full-power Houston signals to serve Spanish-speaking Christians, a fast-growing audience that national Christian networks had historically under-served.
Becoming Hope Media Group
In August 2020 the KSBJ Educational Foundation announced an organisational name change, becoming Hope Media Group with immediate effect. The group explained that the new overarching ministry name positioned it for a larger footprint in and beyond Houston and allowed for future brands and media focused on its founding purpose. The KSBJ name remained on the flagship station; what changed was the corporate identity above it, reflecting a portfolio that by then included a digital youth brand, an events operation and plans that plainly extended past one Houston frequency.
The 2022 merger with WAY Media
The defining event in the group's modern history came on January 26, 2022, when Hope Media Group and WAY Media announced their intention to merge. WAY Media had been founded by Bob and Felice Augsburg in 1987 with WAYJ-FM in Fort Myers, Florida, and operated the WayFM Christian adult contemporary network on FM signals in more than two dozen states, together with digital outlets including Waynation, the Christian rock stream WAYLOUD and the pop stream Way Now.
The transaction was structured as a cash-free merger of equals, approved unanimously by both boards, and was expected to close by mid-2022 following Federal Communications Commission approval. The merged organisation kept the Hope Media Group name and its Houston headquarters. Hope Media Group's Joe Paulo became president and chief executive of the combined entity, while WAY Media's interim chief executive, Tim Dukes, became chief operating officer. Both flagship brands — KSBJ and WayFM — continued under their existing names. Together, the organisations said at announcement, they engaged audiences totalling more than four million people, combining forty years of ministry from KSBJ's 1982 start with thirty-five years from WAYJ's 1987 launch.
Integration followed quickly. On July 15, 2022, the hip-hop and pop streams NGEN Radio and Way Now were consolidated, with the combined service continuing as NGEN Radio and reaching an estimated 60,000 monthly listeners worldwide; Way Now's final streaming day was July 14, 2022.
Brands and platforms
The combined group's portfolio is built to reach a different audience at each point of the Christian media landscape. KSBJ 89.3 serves Houston with contemporary Christian music. WayFM is a listener-supported network heard in about thirty cities. Vida Unida carries Spanish-language Christian programming. Worship 24/7 is dedicated specifically to worship music. NGEN Radio serves younger listeners with Christian hip-hop and pop online, alongside sister streams including Way Loud for Christian rock and other digital channels among the group's thirteen media brands. Hope Nation acts as the hub for digital content including videos, podcasts and blogs, and the God Listens prayer app carries the ministry's prayer work, supported by a concert and events arm, Hope Events.
Recent staffing coverage underlines the breadth: the group's chief of content oversees content strategy across WayFM, KSBJ, Hope Nation, NGEN, Worship 24/7 and Vida Unida together — a single content leadership for what were, within living memory, two separate ministries in two states.
New headquarters in New Caney
Growth after the merger required a new physical home. Hope Media Group announced it would build its headquarters at Valley Ranch, a mixed-use development in East Montgomery County at the intersection of the Grand Parkway and Interstate 69 in New Caney, Texas. The group's leadership described the ambition as more than an office: a media hub with state-of-the-art technology, sound-isolated studios and collaborative space for creating content for Houston, the United States and Latin America.
The completed facility, unveiled after construction, is a 50,000-square-foot Ministry and Media Center designed with the architecture firm Gensler and built by Tellepsen. It features an open floor plan intended to encourage connection and transparency, focused workspaces, prayer rooms, a café and a large multipurpose room that can be divided in two, with acoustically equipped creative studios. The group employs more than 150 team members and, by its own account, reaches millions of people each week across its brands.
Audience, funding and character
Hope Media Group is a nonprofit, listener-supported ministry: its stations are supported by donors rather than built primarily on commercial advertising, and its published materials frame listening, giving, praying and attending events as parts of one participatory relationship. Its stated values in recruitment and ministry material stress an environment that is encouraging, collaborative and family-oriented, in service of the same mission statement carried across all its brands.
That character shaped its biggest decision. The WAY Media merger was presented by both leadership teams not as an acquisition but as a collaboration between equals, prayed over by both boards for months, and offered as a model of unity among Christian ministries. Whatever its corporate form, the result is concrete: a Houston-founded foundation from 1982 now operates national English and Spanish networks, worship and youth brands, prayer and events ministries, and a purpose-built media centre in New Caney — one of the largest Christian media organisations in the United States.
