Re: "Religious" Stations...(WAS: Re: WEVD (was WFAN New York)

[Rob Landry <umar@wcrb.com>]

> The idea that the proponderance of fundamentalist evanglical protestant
> programming on commercial Christian stations in the US stems from the
> preponderance of Christians in the US population does not hold water. I
> guess that Catholics are fundamentalist evangelical Christians, but they
> aren't protestants. I believe that the number of Catholics in the US
> population is second only to the aggregate number of protestants of all
> denominations, and probably exceeds the membership of any single protestant
> denomination.

Yep.  The Roman Catholic Church is the most numerous religious
denomination in the U.S.

> several Baptist churches. Perhaps Baptists do not like to be lumped together
> as a single denomination.)
> 
> You find very few Christian stations (English-language ones, anyhow) that
> carry appreciable programming aimed at Catholics. I'm sure that part of the
> reason for this is that the Catholic Church _is_ a monolithic organization
> and that the Church raises money in other ways than by radio ministries.

The Church owns its own radio stations in many countries (Vatican Radio is
probably the best known). I believe WWL in New Orleans, for example, was
owned for many years by a Catholic university. 

There are (or have been) Catholic radio programs on local stations.  When
I was with WUNR/WBOS, we aired a short program in Spanish every day on
WUNR produced and paid for by the Archdiocese of Boston, and also an
Italian-lanuguage church service.  Here on WCRB we used to air something
called the Sacred Heart program; it was played from LP records.

> I doubt that the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists,
> Lutherans, and Unitarian/Universalists are responsible for much of the
> paid programming on commercial Christian stations. 

The only Unitarian program I've ever heard is that of the "Church of the
Larger Fellowship"; it airs (or used to; haven't heard it recently) on
WCRB.

There is an Episcopal church service on WCRB also.


Rob Landry
umar@wcrb.com

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