Christian radio refers to Christian media that focus on Christianity religious broadcasting or various forms of Christian music. Many such formats and programs include contemporary Christian music, gospel music, , , as well as news radio and talk radio shows covering popular culture, economics, and political topics from a Christian perspective.
History
American evangelicalism
In the first part of the 20th century, American revivalists saw radio as a tool for spreading
the gospel. Christian radio pioneers included Aimee Semple McPherson, D. L. Moody, Charles E. Fuller,
Donald Barnhouse, Walter A. Maier, Paul Rader, Lightfoot Solomon Michaux, and
Percy Crawford.
In addition to preaching and sermons, other content such as news, children's programs, and gospel music were broadcast. Scholar Leah Payne states "In the 1920s, Christian broadcasters featured gospel quartets and trios who upheld the traditional social order and contrasted with images of 'bright young things' and Flapper."
Christian radio was also used to encourage political action; major broadcasters such as CBS and NBC, however, aired mainline Protestant content and avoided controversial themes. While Catholics, Jews, and mainline Protestants had their own broadcast organizations, various evangelical groups and fundamentalists banded together to form National Religious Broadcasters, which "spread conservative, white political views and Premillennialism dispensational theology". With its ability to reach significant numbers of people for potentially hours each day, at home and away, Christian radio had a formative impact on the direction of Christian media.
Business models
Brokered programming is a significant portion of most U.S. Christian radio stations' revenue, with stations regularly selling blocks of airtime to evangelists seeking an audience. Another revenue stream is solicitation of donations, either to the evangelists who buy the air time or to the stations or their owners themselves. In order to further encourage donations, certain evangelists may emphasize the prosperity gospel, in which they preach that
tithe and donations to the ministry will result in financial blessings from God. Others may have special days of the year dedicated to fundraising, similar to many
NPR stations. Although the solicitation of donations and the sale of airtime may resemble a commercial enterprise, such actions do not necessarily constitute a call to action, and thus this does not forbid them from airing on noncommercial licensed stations in the U.S. A minority of stations, typically music stations, use the traditional model for music radio and allow traditional commercial advertising.
Numerous religious broadcasters own many of their own stations. In the U.S., religious radio stations are exempt from certain rules requiring radio stations to have some local operations, which allows them to have massive networks of transmitters covering far larger areas than a radio station would otherwise be allowed and may not face the same restrictions on the number of signals a broadcaster can own within one geographic area.
Radio formats
Most Christian radio stations transmit a mixture of Christian music and Christian talk and teaching.
Christian music
Christian
music radio outlets mirror
commercial radio in many ways, and music in a variety of different
music genre is available. Many stations play primarily
gospel music, including Black Gospel and
Southern Gospel, or contemporary worship music, while others play all formats of contemporary Christian music, including Christian pop,
Christian rock,
Christian rap, Christian country music, and Christian alternative rock. Many artists within the Christian music industry criticize Christian radio for only playing "safe" music, and not taking enough chances on new artists, or in some cases older artists, that may not be as appealing to the largely conservative Gospel Music Association.
Many non-religious radio stations devote some of their weekend programming to Christian music; for example, Black Gospel programming is common on Sundays on many stations featuring the urban contemporary format.
Christian talk, radio drama, sermons
Other Christian stations will present a no-music format that features
talk radio-style programming (sometimes including live radio call-in shows) and/or long-form "preaching and teaching" programs. Notable examples include
Focus on the Family with host Jim Daly,
Amazing Facts,
Living Way with pastor Jack Hayford, and
Rick Warren; an example of an inspirational program are
Moments of Melody and
The Voice of Prophecy. Radio drama programs, long dead in most other radio formats, continue to be transmitted on Christian radio; notable examples include long-running
Adventures in Odyssey,
Patch the Pirate, and
Unshackled! and relative newcomers such as
Down Gilead Lane and
A Work in Progress.
Denominations
Christian radio, particularly in North America, is dominated by
Protestant ministries, particularly those associated with evangelical Christianity. The predominant
Catholic Church radio services are the
WEWN, founded by
Mother Angelica as a spin-off of her television service
EWTN, and Radio Maria USA.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a sect whose place in Christianity is heavily debated, maintains some limited radio evangelical operations through BYU Radio, which owns a single FM station. The Seventh-day Adventists are most closely associated with Three Angels Broadcasting Network.
North American and international availability
Most Christian radio stations as well as programmers based in the United States are members of the National Religious Broadcasters, a Christian organization. There are reportedly 1,600 Christian broadcasting organizations in the U.S. They range from single stations to expansive networks. It is common for religious broadcasters to purchase many small broadcast translators to create networks that stretch across large regions.
Moody Radio was the first example, and still one of the largest, though most of its stations broadcast stand-alone programming as well as network feeds.
WPOZ in Orlando, Florida, the
WAY-FM Network,
K-LOVE, Air 1,
WJIS,
WXHL-FM, 3ABN Radio, Radio 74, and the Bible Broadcasting Network are other notable examples in the world.
Christian radio expanded in the early twenty-first century. It became available in the United Kingdom with changes to broadcasting regulations. Premier Christian Radio is based in the London area where it is available on medium wave and DAB; elsewhere, it is available digitally or by Internet. United Christian Broadcasters is an international broadcasting and media company; radio stations are based in Albania, Australia, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom. Trans World Radio is an evangelical media distributor broadcasting Christian programs in 190 countries in more than 300 languages, TWR-UK can be heard in the United Kingdom on Sky, Freeview and online.
Christian radio programs
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Focus on the Family, an internationally syndicated daily interview produced by Focus on the Family
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Adventures in Odyssey, a scripted radio comedy/drama for children produced by Focus on the Family
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Patch the Pirate, a scripted radio musical comedy for children produced by Majesty Music
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Back to the Bible with Woodrow M. Kroll
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Unshackled! produced by Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago
See also
External links
