From: thomas@mvac23.UUCP (Thomas Lapp)
Newsgroups: rec.music.christian
Subject: Christian Radio
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 93 14:37:02 EST
Organization: MultiVac23, Newark, DE, U.S.A.

I had a chance to visit a local Christian Radio station last week and
I think that this story perhaps can explain a lot about the industry
in general.  Granted, not all stations are like this, and there are
some good things going on in Christian radio, but I think that stations
like the following are more common than not.

Although the station only has about 2800 Watts of power, its signal is
heard throughout much of the rural area it is located in, as well as
reaching to two medium market areas across the border in another state.
Although I haven't tried to find out signal strength, it is even likely
that it hits some suburbs of a major market area.  So one would think
that the owner and operator of this commercial station would want to
push the limits of the area when getting commercials and programming to
run on the station.  But such is not the case.

In fact, the station is almost run as though the owner didn't care
what kind of listership the station had.  As a listener, I find that
the jocks have a rather amateur sound to them -- very campy sometimes --
and often appear not to have their brain in gear when talking.  The
programming is hit or miss.  Although the music is AC with some light
CHR thrown in to appeal to a younger market, most of the music is
aimed at the 24-40 AC market -- yes, the Yuppie market.  But part of the
problem in hearing the music is that on the most popular times of the
day for listeners (the morning and evening 'drive times', which are
6am to 9am and 4pm to 6pm), a majority of that time is programmed with
religious (read: preaching) tapes.  When I spoke to one of the programmers
about a year ago, he said that "the boss doesn't care how it sounds, as
long as they pay to put their program on the station, they can choose
any time of the day they want to put it on."

I visited the station in hopes of finding out why the sound was so 'campy'
right in the middle of the afternoon drive time, and I soon found out
what I wanted to know.  Indeed it was not the fault of the jock on the air.
She is as good or better professionally than many jocks I know.  The problem
is that the sister AM station goes on "semi-automated" programming in the
afternoon, and the FM jock HAS TO RUN BOTH THE FM AND THE AM SIDE of the
station.  That's right.  The owner is making the FM jock work two jobs during
the afternoon (until the AM side shuts down at sundown).  So no wonder the
FM jock is so absent-minded on the air -- she literally is running back and
forth between two studios trying to keep both of them running with active
programming and keeping them both legal on power, IDs, etc.

Now let's talk about why they don't have enough people to run the station
the way it should be:  because the owner is trying to cut costs wherever
possible, and does not pay MORE THAN MINIMUM WAGE even for experienced
jocks.  Not only that, but the poor afternoon jock is running both the
FM and AM side as well as being the Production Director and Music Director.
The benefits of being PD or MD?  A minor increase in pay, but not much.
And, in fact, that's as high as pay goes.  I'm not sure what this amounts
to, but I'll bet it is low enough that it is below the poverty level for
a worker.  Which explains why the jocks are young people who don't have
families or other large debts to support.

Next, let me address equipment.  To put it in perspective, I've worked
in a 100 Watt college station on a religious campus (hi WEMC-FM 
Harrisonburg!)  where a retired individual maintained the 15-25 year-old
equipment and they only got a CD player because of a donation.  I've
also worked at WWVU-FM, the campus station of West Virginia University,
who's budget comes from a $4/semester fee from all students.  They had
multiple reel-to-reel machines in both control and production studios,
and the production studio could operate as a full on-air studio if it
had to.  We're talking pretty professional stuff here.  And the quality
showed on the air.

At this religious station, they operate their production studio with
a 4-pot Gates that is at least 25 years old.  Plugging into it is
a single cart machine, a single turntable, a single Tascam reel-to-reel,
and a dual cassette deck (Realistic, I think!).  Not much in the way of
flexibility for stuff, eh?

The FM control room has two cart machines, two CD players (Radio Shack!),
two turntables (old QRM units), and about a six-pot Gates.  The newest
thing in the studio is the transmitter equipment, and that's probably
because it was cheaper to replace than repair whatever they had in
before.  There are no remote buttons for the input devices -- you have
to trigger each one by its own buttons.  No shuttle capability on the
CD players (they're home units after all).  Basically, they are a
commercial station and operating with equipment not much newer than
what a 100 Watt non-commercial religious college station has.  The
disappointing thing is that the studios that are used by local churches
to produce programs that are aired on the station have MUCH MUCH better
equipment than the station that plays it!

Lastly, the programming itself.  They used to report to CCM for their
charts, but don't any more.  They only get their music from singles that
are sent to the station by the record industry (which isn't much if you
don't report to anything).  That and single samplers which come in by
CD.  The religious programming that they offer often comes in on cassette
tape, and the quality varies from excellent (from the church that has a
$1 Million production studio) to atrocious (from some small churches who
sound like they send a tape made from a portable machine in the third
pew).  But since they pay to put their programming on the air, the owner
won't enforce any sort of minimum quality levels.  I suppose if I wanted
to pay the price, I could put on 15 minutes or 1/2 hour of white noise
if I wanted to.

I fear that the apathy of Christian radio is a determining factor in why
religious radio sounds as bad as it does in many markets.  People are
just trying to get too much out of too little -- too little equipment,
too little people, and too little money.
                         - tom
--
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Location     : Newark, DE, USA