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Re: Sunday, March 28, 2004
We do need to make some distinctions here, and I haven't been doing a good job of that so far. There are the commercial religious outfits like Salem, which owns a pile of big AM stations (in New York, Denver, Honolulu, Tampa). Some are brokered religious content, like you talk about here. Some are news/talk stations, such as KKNT, "The Patriot" in Phoenix. There are cultish noncommercial outfits like Harold Camping's Family Radio, which has been almost unbelievably resourceful in rolling out translators everywhere. The audio is often horrible, sometimes beyond the verge of intelligibility. There are places where you can hear four or five signals, usually beaning down from mountaintops. They license for communities nobody has ever heard of. It's amazing what they do. Here is a guide to religious broadcasting in the Bay Area that includes both Salem's commercial KFAX (50kw on 1100am) and Family's noncommercial KEAR (69kw at 106.9 on Mt. Beacon in Marin... a grandfathered noncom of considerable size on the commercial band). To some degree both Salem and Family have what we might call a right-wing agenda, but I doubt if either change many, if any votes. And, as you say, the ratings pretty much suck. Then there are outfits like K-Love, which are mostly Christian Music stations. K-Love is evangelical, but it's not the Landover Baptist Church, by a long shot. I even find them listenable sometimes. Then there's Crawford Broadcasting, which like Salem operates a large number of large stations, mostly on the AM band. The company has an anti-Liberal stand (that's what they call it), but when I listen (once in a loong while), I don't hear much other than preaching. Homiletics for the homogeneous. Anyway, I agree. Their effect on the larger culture is minimal. Even harmless, on the whole. To the degree that people enjoy it and get some good out of it, and that it brings out kindness in their hearts, or whatever, it's a not a bad thing and maybe even a good thing. But my point from the beginning here has been that, at least on FM, religious broadcasters have been packing the dials with signals while the public radio folks have been doing approximately squat.
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