Family Radio - History

History

Family Radio began obtaining FM broadcasting licenses on commercial frequencies early in FM's history, and by 2006, was ranked 19th among top broadcast companies in number of radio stations owned.

In 1958, a Family Radio founder, Harold Camping, joined with other individuals of Christian Reformed, Bible Baptist, and Conservative Christian Presbyterian to purchase an FM radio station in San Francisco, California, KEAR, then at 97.3 MHz, to broadcast traditional Christian Gospel to the conservative Protestant community and minister to the general public. With the primary purpose of broadcasting doctrines of Christianity reflective of the teachings of the Holy Bible, Family Radio remained independent, never merging with any particular church organization or church denominations

Through the 1960s, as a ministry, both non-profit organization and non-commercial, Family Radio acquired six additional FM stations and seven other AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The flagship station for the network of both full-power and low-power translator stations is KEAR in San Francisco (now at 610 kHz, since 2005 at 106.9 MHz). Due to FCC rules regarding translator stations, the legal primary station for the translators was changed to KEAR-FM in Sacramento, after the former primary FM station in San Francisco was sold to CBS Radio.

With the sale of KEAR-FM to CBS Radio in 2005, broadcasts from San Francisco moved to an AM radio frequency. Family Radio continues to own other large market FM commercial band stations, including WFME 94.7 MHz Newark, NJ in the New York City radio market.

Many program productions broadcast throughout the Family Radio station network were produced in the Oakland, California facilities. The production process involved pre-recording two weeks of broadcast programming on reel-to-reel tapes distributed to each local Family Radio station for broadcast on the specified date. Free broadcast time was provided by Family Radio to national fundamentalist and evangelical ministries—outside ministries' programs were sent in cassette and reel-to-reel tape formats to respective Family Radio stations for local broadcast. Popular network announcers and the programs they hosted included Jon Arthur (The Quiet Hours, Big Jon & Sparky, Radio Reading Circle); Omar Andeel (The Morning Clock); Harold Hall (The Christian Home); Ken Boone (Music to Live By); Bob Swenson (Transition); and Jerry Edinger (Nightwatch). Each local Family Radio station had local board operators providing world, national, and local news and weather at various intervals throughout the day; regular public service announcements and daily public affairs programming; and local traffic reports via phone call-in during morning and afternoon weekdays. Outside ministry programs included Focus on the Family, Freedom Under Fire, Unshackled, Back to the Bible, Family News in Focus, Beyond Intelligent Design, and "Walk with the King" with Dr. Robert A. Cook. This last program still airs today, although now often edited in places deemed incompatible with Camping's odd end-times and "apostate church" doctrinal stands.

By the late 1980s, programming was delivered via satellite, local news was taken off the stations in favor of a various national news from a Christian news source, and all but a few local announcements are produced at their Oakland, California facilities.

Beginning in the late 1990s, Family Radio began gradually dropping outside ministries because of doctrinal changes in the ministry. As board members left the ministry, they were not being replaced. Harold Camping's views as they were changing became the focus of the entire ministry. Up until the late 1980s, Family Radio endorsed local church attendance but once Camping stated the church age was over, they now claim that Christians should NOT be members or attend church services of any type. Today Family Radio produces 95% of their programming and runs very few outside ministries. Most teaching programs were hosted by Harold Camping himself up until June 2011; after Camping suffered a stroke, his programs were gradually phased out.

Music broadcast by Family Radio in the 1960s and 1970s was typical of religious stations, commercial and non-commercial. Some commercial stations played Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) for a few hours a week, but in the 1980s, as commercial and some non-commercial Christian stations evolved to Contemporary formats, Family Radio remained with a mainly traditional music format composed of choir hymns, various Gospel singing groups such as the Bill Gaither Trio, Christian college choirs, instrumental orchestral hymn renditions from conductors such as Paul Mickelson and Ralph Carmichael, vocalists such as George Beverly Shea, Frank Boggs, Doug Oldham, Mahalia Jackson, John McGill, Dave Boyer, and others, and softer urban contemporary gospel songs. From the 1970s onward, Family Radio included a few selected tracks from some lighter contemporary Christian artists such as Maranatha, Pam Mark Hall, Cynthia Clawson, the New Creation Singers, Ken Medema, Michael Card, Steve Green and others, but largely abandoned this direction by the early 2000s, although this genre is still occasionally heard.

In the mid- to late 1970s there began a policy of not announcing the names of artists behind the music aired. Listeners had to write in for information about music heard that they were interested in.

Family Radio's text publications, continue to be based on the text of the authorized King James Bible. Prerecorded Bible readings broadcast over satellite, shortwave, radio frequencies and the internet are generally based on the Modern King James Bible.

Leading up to May 2011, Family Radio spent millions of dollars to advertise the now-discredited 2011 end times prediction.

Two days after this supposed "Rapture" failed happen, A Bible Answer (a Bible teaching ministry) offered to buy 66 full-powered radio stations from Family Radio founder Harold Camping in an effort to get him to resign from preaching this doctrine. The offer came with a catch – they were not take possession of the stations until October 22, the day after Camping's revised set-date for the end of the world. A Bible Answer's website calls for Camping to resign from the Family Radio board, citing "the self-proclaimed expert on the Bible has brought reproach upon Christ, the Bible, and the church," and adds "After taking the money of his supporters, let Harold give up all he has, to show he believes what he is preaching. He does not or else he would sell. It is time to get new leadership at Family Radio."

On August 3, 2011, the radio industry website Radio-Info.com reported that Family Radio was putting two of its stations up for sale: WKDN in Philadelphia and WFSI in Annapolis, Maryland (covering the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore areas); the article indicated that the ministry may have sold the stations to pay off "operating deficits accumulated over the last several years". WFSI would be purchased in November 2011 by CBS Radio, which converted the station to a Spanish language dance music format under the WLZL call sign. Merlin Media, LLC struck a deal in December 2011 to acquire WKDN, which was relaunched with a talk format under the WWIQ call sign.

In January 2012, Family Radio applied to the FCC to change the license of station WFME in Newark, New Jersey from non-commercial to commercial. The application quickly prompted conjecture from radio industry monitors that the station will soon be sold. Those rumors were confirmed on October 16, 2012, when it was announced that Family Stations would sell WFME to Atlanta-based Cumulus Media for an undisclosed price.