WGOD

A fascinating study was released today by the Pew Forum on religion and public life. It found 51% of Americans are Protestant. 24% are Catholic with 2% Jews and 1.7% Muslims (?!!) As with any survey a quick look between the lines show something truly amazing. 16.1% of Americans (of which I'm one) have no religion at all...most of them younger than 35.
What, you ask, does this have to do with radio? I'll explain. Religion and Radio have been joined at the hip since the 1930's. It is one of the few things heard on English language shortwave stations, and many radio stations devote most or all of their broadcast day to it.
Since the Communications Act of 1934, radio stations must be operated in the "public interest, convenience, and neccesity". What exactly IS the public interest can be debated from now until St. Swithens Day, but do religious stations serve the public interest? In my opinion, frequently not. Religion, as if you didn't know, has become big business. Salem Communications owns 92 stations, of which most are religious music or talk. EMF owns far more stations than that, all airing national feeds of either what they call K-Love or Air1, which are Christian music formats. Let's focus on these for now. How does one serve the public interest when there's not ONE SCRAP of local information on these stations? It's the same feed from Salem NH to Salem OR.
I can hear it now....Shel, you're just anti-religion. Absolutely not true. While I'm against religion FOR ME...if anyone else wants it, great. I'm just not convinced these large radio companies are doing God's work so much as stroking some inflated corporate ego-the one that thinks He (pun intended) with the most staions wins. No one wins. These stations employ virtually no one, and will never again air anything that doesn't come off a satellite signal hundreds or thousands of miles away. No news (except for a few minutes of national headlines occasionally), no weather, not even local commercials. This benefits us how, exactly? This is all designed to do only one thing...get you to write them a check so they can continue to "do the Lord's work". You REALLY want to do the Lord's work? Build homes for the homeless. Run a food pantry. Help people who are in spiritual or other crisis. Fix a church roof. Do something other than play another Amy Grant record.
There are many good, kind, and devoted people who work in local religious radio stations that work to make their local markets better. It's a damn shame they don't work for Salem or EMF. They continue to thumb their nose at the FCC (who's too busy levying fines to enforce their own rules) and get rich in the process. I doubt that's what a certain Jewish carpenter had in mind.