and the fact that the "religious" stations (K-Love included) consider it more of a "ministry" than anything else...
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K-Love's TV Commercials Don't Say "Christian"
- Thread starter Gregg.
- Start date
Earlier in the thread, it was said K-Love had an agenda because of music they played. Country has an agenda just as bad. So does Rock, Classic Hits, etc. By your definition you imply K-Love creates an agenda by controlling music. No they're just like any other format that is hit based. They play the product the record companies send them follow the releases and play the most popular hits. K-Love does not hire bands to create songs nor dictate lyrics to musicians. K-Love plays the hits, that is all. K-Love works like the CHR I last worked.
And that damn preaching...on Air1 (K-Love's twin) the morning show was talking about a couple and how there would be this stench from time to time while watching TV which was blamed on the dog. The guy stayed mum as the girl had her beloved dog run through tests and finally a switch to high end dog food. When nothing worked, the guy finally admitted it was him, not the dog. I think she wanted him to pay some of the vet expenses for not coming clean until every other option was exhausted. Folks were asked to weigh in on what they thought.
Literally, K-Love and the others are Hit Radio for people who go to church or are spiritual and do it so well they ask listeners to pay for it. And they do! Take you favorite radio station. If they took off all the commercials would it be radio so good you're send them $15 to $25 a month each month?
And that damn preaching...on Air1 (K-Love's twin) the morning show was talking about a couple and how there would be this stench from time to time while watching TV which was blamed on the dog. The guy stayed mum as the girl had her beloved dog run through tests and finally a switch to high end dog food. When nothing worked, the guy finally admitted it was him, not the dog. I think she wanted him to pay some of the vet expenses for not coming clean until every other option was exhausted. Folks were asked to weigh in on what they thought.
Literally, K-Love and the others are Hit Radio for people who go to church or are spiritual and do it so well they ask listeners to pay for it. And they do! Take you favorite radio station. If they took off all the commercials would it be radio so good you're send them $15 to $25 a month each month?
Almost every station below ninety-two megahertz works that way:
classical, jazz, NPR, progressive, all of them except for college stations.
Some of the artists on those networks, especially for KING & Country, Lauren Daigle and NEEDTOBREATHE cross over to AC and Hot AC radio routinely. I've heard them all in grocery stores. The music is much different than what it was in the 80s, 90s and Early 2000s. The songs were lyrically more deep but they didn't have any catchy or memorable choruses. At some point in the last decade it evolved. The lyrics became more simple, more memorable, easier to allow for mass appeal.. Contemporary Worship seems like it started to gain popularity around 2014 or so and has really just gone off the rails in the last couple years. The majority of the streaming charts are filled with those songs. Country artists such as Florida Georgia Line and Thomas Rhett have a duet with Chris Tomlin playing on K-LOVE. They also are playing a TobyMac cut with Sheryl Crow. There was a period in 2019 when Air1 was playing "Use This Gospel" by Kanye West, Clipse & Kenny G (Yes, that one). It was awkward but at the time they were working that album to Christian radio. The genre, at least the CCM side of it is more accessible than ever to people who might not otherwise have listened to that music in the past.
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This is an excellent strategy, thanks for posting it! Even after multiple years together, I've been excusing myself to another room, but this is actually brilliantly creative and I think I'll start trying this, as our dog is getting a bit older and not able to digest as easily, thus somewhat gassy at times. We're having cabbage-heavy veggie soup tonight, so this may be an opportune time. Will report back.
the Christian stations such as K-Love don't look at it that way - particularly Star 99.1, which sees itself and is seen by many of us as a ministry whose ultimate focus is on God. (ps - i chose not to use the word that you had used before the word preaching - that word is NOT a word that a Christian would be using) -
And as for that *** preaching, one of the focal points of any good Christian radio station is to preach the Word of the Living God in a totally Biblical way. All the things that go on at a Christian radio station are focused on Jesus...
the Christian stations such as K-Love don't look at it that way - particularly Star 99.1, which sees itself and is seen by many of us as a ministry whose ultimate focus is on God. (ps - i chose not to use the word that you had used before the word preaching - that word is NOT a word that a Christian would be using) -
And as for that *** preaching, one of the focal points of any good Christian radio station is to preach the Word of the Living God in a totally Biblical way. All the things that go on at a Christian radio station are focused on Jesus...
Depends on the station. Commercial CCM stations are almost always (Not 100%) radio stations that play Christian music and operate more as a business than as a ministry. In fact, EMF has a usual way of buying stations. If there is a Non Commercial CCM station in a market, they will not put K-LOVE on the station. They'll put Air1 on. If there is a commercial CCM station in the market, and the commercial one is the only CCM station in the market, they will put K-LOVE on.
Non Commercial ones are usually ministries or outreach, unlike commercial ones.
EMF's presentation makes it seem like sort of a mixture of both. It's non commercial, programming on the radio is generally presented like a typical AC station. They have a minute of preaching (59 Seconds Of Hope) per hour. Their ministry is more of the outreach they do in the community. Their Pastors on staff who will pray and talk with listeners 24/7. Convoy Of Hope (Emergencies) Air1's Dare To Dream (An assembly program for schools, it's not religious but it generally has a positive message)
Some of the last remaining Christian CHR stations are in small towns. They are often programmed like typical CHR stations. They are just trying to reach the lost, people who might not be Christian or have left the Church. They do this with music.
RadioU (Based in Ohio) is probably the last remaining Christian Rock station. Small network of stations. Reminds me of the 90s-2000s Air1. None of the content on there is overtly Religious in nature. They'll talk about virtually anything that your average 18-34 or 30 something Male who likes Rock music likes to talk about. They'll play Christian Rock music mostly, and chat about life in general. However every so often they'll do a break about "How to have a relationship with Jesus" with information on how to ask Jesus into their life, and a give a link on their website. Air1 used to do this when they still were focusing more heavily on reaching people that might not have been Christian. They'd run promos for a phone number that people could call and talk with someone to accept Jesus, and the jocks would occasionally break away from the usual topic and become serious about how Jesus is the way. Air1 long since stopped doing this when they went with Contemporary Worship. A lot of people were upset about this. But in general, the Christian music industry has stopped trying to reach non Christians with the music they have been putting out. They used to actively do this. Actually the original intent of that network was to reach men who wouldn't go near Christian radio because Christian radio was designed mostly for women. That was in 1995
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According to Wikipedia WMIT HD-2 is Christian rock.
WMIT is the radio station for Billy Graham's ministry, in the Asheville NC market with the highest tower in the Eastern US and plays CCM with at least one full-length sermon during the evening.
Do you know their history? Back when there were few if any restrictions on power or height, they were authorized to go up to an ungodly half a megawatt ERP from a heavenly location and had the broadest coverage of any domestic FM station. That was during a time when few people had FM receivers, so they eventually crucified their operation. When their frequency was eventually resurrected, they fell under the revised rules and came back on with 36Kw, because they were still at almost a kilometer HAAT.
Oh, what could have been!
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They need to do liners sorta like the commercial stations do [or did]: "Turn it up loud around the non-believers and rip the knob off!" , "Tell all your heathen friends that unless they listen to us , they're going to Hell!"
It's very interesting to me that for most of the growth of Christian radio, AC formats are really the only major music formats outside of Gospel. (Southern or Urban.) Rock formats never seem to sustain, outside of Radio U's small footprint. There's some growth with Rhythmic connected to the Boost Radio format. But music formats that appeal to males primarily have never seemed to do well in Christian radio.
The music just isn’t there anymore. There used to be a lot of mass appeal Christian rock and pop-rock that would easily crossover into mainstream radio. Air1 thrived on bands like P.O.D., Daughtry, Flyleaf, Switchfoot, The Almost, Red, Owl City, Relient K, etc in their rock days. It faded out around 2014-2015 and they ended up repositioning from The Positive Alternative to Positive Hits. The Worship music from Bethel, Hillsong, etc started to take hold among the 18-34s, so they went with it, initially partially and finally fulltime this year.
That said, a lot of the Worship stuff technically is rock. They play guitars and drums. They had a station that had it’s processing setup in a way where the music drowned out the vocals. When I was listening, a lot of it sounded like live rock music. I think they’ve fixed the problem since, but it did catch my brain for a minute.
There’s not enough mass appeal Christian Rock being pushed by the labels anymore
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Radio U might be a little more like that, with more aggressive music.
Definitely, not much in the way of "male" Christian music for a largely (even if de-emphasized) patriarchal religion.)
As we're starting to see, a lot of young men are angry. Perhaps they would benefit from some saving.
Some of these bands have actually been struggling with the religion itself. Some members have fallen away in recent years. A lot of them no longer want to be labeled as Christian bands. There was an article about 4 years ago with members of Underoath and The Almost discussing this.. These are people who put out solo Worship albums a few years prior.
Quite some time ago I lived in Springfield, Ohio where Radio U had a translator. I was listening on a Friday night and they had a specialty show with very aggressive sounding music. I couldn't quite make that compute. :"I'm mad at the world, everything sucks but Jesus"...(I don't know what the actual lyrics were)...seemed not to compute.
A few have come out as LGBTQ or Black Lives Matter supporters....both are career killers
The labels are in a state where they don’t want anything that might stir up controversy. There’s a documentary about this somewhere. They want absolutely nothing controversial. Some Christians might not mind, while others would flip out. They just want people to be quiet about it. A lot of artists dodge the question when asked what they think about things like gay marriage. That has been an issue that will eventually probably be addressed. Some artists have put out songs about racism and hate (Mandisa - Bleed The Same, Josh Wilson - Revolutionary) but that is about as far as they’ll let it go.
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