Well, harsh - I don't really have the time to go into the background of what I think is going on, but there is more than you know. First of all, there are two KSBJ's. one of which was destroyed almost a quarter century ago. Incarnation number 1 was Buddy Holiday's vision of a station for young people, just for young people, that would never sell out to traditionalists. That was the vision I contributed to as a donor - I had two nephews, and wanted a Christian station for them. I had to move from the area for job opportunities, but came back often. KSBJ mode 1 was a welcome change from the horrible Christian radio in the rest of the country except for stations like KLTY in Dallas. There were very creative things like "The Rock of Love" and a Christian oldies show that I remember. Then, all of the sudden, on one trip back into town something changed. The music changed. Gone were all the special, creative shows. It was now "God Listens" and all praise and worship garbage. Unlistenable for a Christian rock fan who loved the old KSBJ. And, unfortunately, unlistenable for the very demographic for which the station was created in the first place. I hear that Buddy Holiday was walked out of the station he founded - disrespectfully. Maybe I heard wrong. But based on what happened to a ministry I was acquainted with in Florida, I had little reason to doubt what I heard. WCIE in Lakeland, FL was at least as influential in the establishment of CCM as KSBJ - and I know for a fact the church that started it conducted an actual "raid" on it to tone down the format. They succeeded, and teenage and young professional listenership went to virtually zero overnight. It came back in a toned down form, but the church intervened again, and put a praise and worship DJ on in the evenings. Not satisfied with even that, they sold it to Moody leaving all of Tampa Bay and Orlando with no CCM station at all, until WPOZ came on the air. The internal changes at KSBj, but I know that the whole Christian music business was overturned. WAPN, where I was doing a show, was on distribution from Sparrow and other record companies. Their monthly CD contained creative, upbeat, fun CCM for a couple of years. We added it. One month it changed. Every single song was slow, plodding, boring, praise and worship. Complete total garbage - unplayable on our show. I thought maybe it was just a bad month. It was not. We got CD after CD of slow boring music, and we started making the long trek to Long's Christian bookstore in Orlando to pay our own money for CD's that were playable. It was a tremendous investment of time and money, as we had to audition the songs right there in the bookstore looking for anything playable. That went on for a couple of years at least, and we amassed quite a good format. Unlike NGEN, our ratings were phenomenal - we out-rated the local top-40 in our timeslot. I am fully convinced that if we had a decent marketing team, we could have taken over that station and made it a real success. Unfortunately - I couldn't sell bottled water in the Sahara desert. Not people oriented. So my guess is that what happened to KSBJ was a nation wide effort on the part of the Christian music labels to tone down CCM and make it more "soccer mom acceptable". They succeeded. KSBJ and stations like it made a ton of money. Big contribution drives, etc. The problem is - soccer moms are aging. The slow boring praise and worship audience is going to literally die off. And all those kids left without Christian radio? They didn't age into the slow and boring praise and worship. The started listening to secular stations, and it is going to be darn hard for KSBJ and the rest of the CCM stations to ever get them back. To KSBJ's credit - they always try to be on the leading edge of the format. Thankfully the awful praise and worship music era seems to be abating and even regular KSBJ is playing much better music than they did even a few years ago. So is KLTY and every other CCM station. But I think they see the future, and it isn't CCM. WPOZ is doing the same thing in Orlando, only they separate the Christian rock and Christian hip-hop formats. Their hip-hop format is having more success than their rock format. Maybe KSBJ is leveraging that experience and applying it to NGEN. Almost a quarter century of praise and worship type CCM cannot be erased overnight, or in a few months. They are not trying to start a station, they are trying to re-invent CCM, and I think they are in it for the long haul. The kids and young professionals are the most coveted demographic for secular stations, because of their spending power. That doesn't translate very well into donation during pledge drives. At least not yet. At some point it probably will. This is a long process of re-establishing a long dead format nationwide. If they succeed, they will definitely be patting themselves on the back - and rightfully so. If they don't, well, they didn't tell the church of tomorrow that they care today. That massive multi-thousand member youth group at the mega-church - their car radio presets are on KRBE and other secular stations. The whole concept of a Christian station that is fun and relevant to them is completely foreign to them. Christian radio - isn't that just for old people? Kind of reminds me of the late 60's - FM - isn't that just for old people? These big shifts take time, and I hope KSBJ will take the time to make it work. The young people and young professionals - abandoned by Christian radio for a quarter century - deserve it. Just as black artist deserved to be heard in the 60's, instead of having their music covered by white artists. These things take time. KSBJ can afford to be patient.
