America's Word Inc and Sparrow Corporation sold to non-Christian companies.

WORD INC, the largest Christian record company in the world, have been bought by Thomas Nelson, the world's largest Bible publisher, for $72 million. The move ends months of speculation as to the future of Word after previous owners, American TV giants Capital City/ABC, announced its intention to sell the company.

Thomas Nelson president Sam Moore issued a statement saying "This acquisition is strategic for Thomas Nelson because the operations of both companies will result in our being the industry leader in Bible publishing, Christian music and Christian and Inspirational book publication". The deal is expected to take Thomas Nelson's annual turnover to around $200 million. The move from secular to Christian ownership for Word came only 24 hours before EMI announced its acquisition of Sparrow Corporation, one of the world's largest independent Christian music companies. Sparrow was founded in 1976 by Billy Ray Hearn who steered the company from a Christian music record label into a multi-media company involved in music publishing, film and video production, book publishing and distribution which last year enjoyed sales totalling $30 million. Hearn will remain at Sparrow, but will be joined by new co-chairman Jimmy Bowen, president of EMI's Nashville based record company Liberty Records. (Liberty recently announced the signing of Carman - see separate news item.) Jimmy Bowen stated "Contemporary Christian music is going to move into the contemporary market place worldwide.

Working in tandem with the finest Christian record company in the world, Sparrow, we will launch a broad-based marketing campaign to expand the presence of Christian recordings in mainstream outlets."

Sparrow is distributed to UK Christian bookstores by Word (UK) Ltd.