music and politics on radio

[Donna Halper]

>Scott wrote--
>
>(An anecdote about the dangers of mixing anything other than music into a 
>music format: my mother-in-law, who is Jewish, is visiting from Indiana 
>this weekend, and we got to talking about radio there. She was complaining 
>that one of the local "lite FM" stations now plays a handful of 
>contemporary Christian tunes as part of its music mix every morning.

First, a belated Happy New Year to Scott and other Jewish 
list-members.  Second, that's a very interesting point.  For some people, 
they really do wanna hear Christian music.  For others (including some of 
my friends who are Christian), they don't like anything that preaches or 
has a religious message. They come to mainstream pop radio to get away from 
anything with a religious message, even though some songs may have a 
spiritual side to them-- but as long as the song doesn't preach, it's not a 
tuneout to my secular friends.  SO, if your community is mostly Christian 
(which given that Jews make up only 3% of the US population, there's a good 
chance your market IS majority Christian), does that mean it's okay to mix 
in Christian music, even very nicely produced Christian music, if it's not 
your format?  When I was consulting fulltime, I used to warn clients of the 
dangers of mixing in country songs to their AC format if the songs were not 
AC hits and didn't really fit the station's over-all sound.  Yeah, it's 
tempting to wanna be all things to all people, but I am not sure you can do 
it.  As for religious music, I am not sure I'd wanna go down that road, 
just because even in society today, it's a very polarizing issue.  If I 
have a religious station, of course I play that stuff-- we have many 
Christian stations that use our music software, for example.  But to blend 
Christian with AC on a Lite FM-- I don't know if it's a good idea, and not 
just because a couple of Jews might object.