Tuesday
Nov292005
Lost on Christian Radio
Tuesday, November 29, 2005 at 02:19AM
Ok, so I'm sitting here watching the end of Conan, Brad Paisley's on and I was in orchestra in college with a couple of his band guys so I always like to watch him, and he's a great guitar player, and a commercial comes on. It's for "chat now with local singles." Totally lame and I always tune them out, but the girl on it was the girl from Lost, the one who plays Kate. How weird. Bet she's glad that one's still on.
All right, so this is something I've wanted to write about for a while, and now seems like as good a time as any. I was running a couple errands tonight and I decided to check out ol' Christian radio while I was driving around. The station here calls itself listener-supported, as do many christian stations around the country. These are the ones who do those call-in "share-a-thon's." And that's fine. I'm ok with that. Here's my thing.
This station plays commercials. But there's a catch. They call them "sponsorships," not "commercials." Companies, tonight's were a Lexus dealership, a mortgage lender, the doctor that delivered Ella, (that was weird) and one other I forgot, "donate" money to the station, then they do a "sponsor acknowledgement" where they talk about the business, give their phone number and address and what deals they're doing. They also make sure everybody knows that this business honors people with "values" and that their business has "values" too. Since Christianity is all about family values...
Listener-supported stations are tax-exempt, AND they don't have to pay nearly as much in artist royalties, some don't have to at all. Just in case you're wondering, this does mean that christian artists don't get paid when their songs are played on these stations as they would if it were any other station.
A few years ago I heard this stuff on the radio, got ticked off and called their 1-800 number livid. "I just heard a bunch of commercials!" I told the poor lady who answered, "you said you're commercial-free and listener-supported!" She's the one who told me that they consider them sponsorships. She said the difference is that on their station they don't tell you to go shop there, but just tell you about their services.
Honestly, I've thought about this for years, and my opinion on the necessity of christian radio has changed somewhat, but on this topic, I really disagree with her statement. I think this is dishonest and unfair, and it seems they are definitely taking advantage of a loophole in the system.
In all fairness, NPR does this too. Not nearly as much, but Nashville's christian radio is not the only place that does this. Still, just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
The stations are making money selling airtime to businesses who want to talk about their products. Because they play religious music AND take donations, they are able to not pay taxes or pay the artists whose product they operate with. To do this they have to bend the rules AND it sets these businesses up to try and sell themselves on their Christianity, not their product.
I just don't understand why this doesn't seem to rub anyone else the wrong way. Has anybody else ever heard this stuff and wondered about it? Am I over-reacting or just plain wrong? I'm open to changing my mind about this, but as I see it, the ends justify the means to the people involved so they ignore the fact that they're lying to the people they intend to be serving.
It used to make me really mad, and in a lot of ways it still does, but it also makes me sad for the people who do listen. I feel like they're being taken advantage of. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I probably am. I get easily over-riled up about this kind of stuff. I just hate our culture's intermingling of God and money and how it has infiltrated so much of our Church. Even if stuff isn't wrong, it's hard for it to feel right sometimes.
So those have been some of my thoughts tonight, and it's something I've wanted to see what you guys think about. Feel free to leave a comment with any thoughts or reactions you may have, negative or positive. And honestly, I'm hoping for some positive views on this. It would do my heart good. If I offended anyone by this post, I apologize, and I hope I'm not wagging a finger but talking about change for the better. It is my hope and prayer that any media that promotes the name of Jesus would be above reproach, and that's why I'm so hard on this, and TBN and crazy Pat. (Robertson) These stations publicly stand for Christ and I want them to be honest and loving in all they do, as Christ did, but I need to allow that they're run by humans and not God, something I often fail to take into account.
Anyway, as always, thanks for reading and for supporting me and my music. Please leave a comment or a note hello, and I'll try and write again tomorrow. Good night.
All right, so this is something I've wanted to write about for a while, and now seems like as good a time as any. I was running a couple errands tonight and I decided to check out ol' Christian radio while I was driving around. The station here calls itself listener-supported, as do many christian stations around the country. These are the ones who do those call-in "share-a-thon's." And that's fine. I'm ok with that. Here's my thing.
This station plays commercials. But there's a catch. They call them "sponsorships," not "commercials." Companies, tonight's were a Lexus dealership, a mortgage lender, the doctor that delivered Ella, (that was weird) and one other I forgot, "donate" money to the station, then they do a "sponsor acknowledgement" where they talk about the business, give their phone number and address and what deals they're doing. They also make sure everybody knows that this business honors people with "values" and that their business has "values" too. Since Christianity is all about family values...
Listener-supported stations are tax-exempt, AND they don't have to pay nearly as much in artist royalties, some don't have to at all. Just in case you're wondering, this does mean that christian artists don't get paid when their songs are played on these stations as they would if it were any other station.
A few years ago I heard this stuff on the radio, got ticked off and called their 1-800 number livid. "I just heard a bunch of commercials!" I told the poor lady who answered, "you said you're commercial-free and listener-supported!" She's the one who told me that they consider them sponsorships. She said the difference is that on their station they don't tell you to go shop there, but just tell you about their services.
Honestly, I've thought about this for years, and my opinion on the necessity of christian radio has changed somewhat, but on this topic, I really disagree with her statement. I think this is dishonest and unfair, and it seems they are definitely taking advantage of a loophole in the system.
In all fairness, NPR does this too. Not nearly as much, but Nashville's christian radio is not the only place that does this. Still, just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
The stations are making money selling airtime to businesses who want to talk about their products. Because they play religious music AND take donations, they are able to not pay taxes or pay the artists whose product they operate with. To do this they have to bend the rules AND it sets these businesses up to try and sell themselves on their Christianity, not their product.
I just don't understand why this doesn't seem to rub anyone else the wrong way. Has anybody else ever heard this stuff and wondered about it? Am I over-reacting or just plain wrong? I'm open to changing my mind about this, but as I see it, the ends justify the means to the people involved so they ignore the fact that they're lying to the people they intend to be serving.
It used to make me really mad, and in a lot of ways it still does, but it also makes me sad for the people who do listen. I feel like they're being taken advantage of. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I probably am. I get easily over-riled up about this kind of stuff. I just hate our culture's intermingling of God and money and how it has infiltrated so much of our Church. Even if stuff isn't wrong, it's hard for it to feel right sometimes.
So those have been some of my thoughts tonight, and it's something I've wanted to see what you guys think about. Feel free to leave a comment with any thoughts or reactions you may have, negative or positive. And honestly, I'm hoping for some positive views on this. It would do my heart good. If I offended anyone by this post, I apologize, and I hope I'm not wagging a finger but talking about change for the better. It is my hope and prayer that any media that promotes the name of Jesus would be above reproach, and that's why I'm so hard on this, and TBN and crazy Pat. (Robertson) These stations publicly stand for Christ and I want them to be honest and loving in all they do, as Christ did, but I need to allow that they're run by humans and not God, something I often fail to take into account.
Anyway, as always, thanks for reading and for supporting me and my music. Please leave a comment or a note hello, and I'll try and write again tomorrow. Good night.
Reader Comments (28)
My local listener supported station doesn't play commercials but they do mention the sponser of a show. This is far different then playing five minutes of commercials between music or shows. Being a 501c3 charity doeant just mean you get to make lots of money because you don't pay taxes. There are many requirements about how you take in money and operating these stations can be very difficult and expensive. I don't know all of the details but running a listener supported radio station is no way to make money. Maybe not every station is perfect and there are some that may have some real problems but I don't think most are out to steal money from artists. Not only that, playing a song is an advertisement to buy the album. I never understood why artists make money from selling the cd's and radio stations have to pay them to air there stuff. Christian artists generaly don't do what they do for the money. I think they should get what's fair but I don't feel bad that they're not getting millions. Just my thoughts. There's probably a lot of inforation we don't know and we should consider that there is more than meets the eye before getting too upset at someone.
ive got a few things to say on this one being I run an online based christian radio station called C-A-Radio which does have to pay royalties & we recieve nothing in return not from artists or listeners or companies as we do not allow commercial adverts of any discription on the station. I find listeners do not often support the station they are listening to, you will also find that royalty rates whether the station is christian or not works out at around £20 per month for every 25 listeners & 500 hours uptime and if the station is also fm based they can be paying anything up to £10.000 per year just to be on air let alone royalty costs. all together for my little station which you can find on the usual online players i/e media player itunes realplayer etc mine costs £100 per month which only allows me 25 listeners at any one time with no support from anyone so im classed as unemployed and it comes out of my own unemployment bennafits which is extremaly little. of course i am only sharing this with you so that when people read this thread they will be fair to online based christian radio we realy do serve our lord as an act of love & nothing more
I happened to come across this blog while I was looking up some "view changing" something or other to compair with a media study I am doing. I think that the views expressed are very interesting and I don't know a whole lot about how the radio works, but sometimes I like to listen to the music that is played (so long as it isn't the same song for the thousanth time.) But usually I ignore the "comecials" or whatever they are just becuase they are annoying and as a previous person has mentioned somewhere (I don't remember if it was this particular blog or another one) I usually use my CD player or MP3 player for the music and thus avoid those anoying comercials.
About the blog particularily...
I do understand your frustration with this issue, but my views are a little different because I don't really care how a station does things... don't get me wrong though, it is definately wrong for a Christian station to be taking advantage of anything... but they are not the only "Christians" who fall short of doing everything as for God. But hey, we're all humans, aren't we?