Family Radio

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Family Radio is a non-commercial traditional religious broadcasting network in the United States, founded by Harold Camping in 1959 and based in Oakland, California. The network consists of mainly FM radio stations on non commercial licenses (with a few commercial licenses used as non commercial) and relays, with some AM stations and a television station, plus WYFR shortwave in Okeechobee, Florida. The network produces programming in numerous languages.

Camping came from a Dutch Reformed Church background and owned a construction company before founding Family Radio. FR began obtaining FM licenses on commercial frequencies before many Americans even owned FM radios. Camping's affiliates in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore/Washington, and San Francisco are on prime commercial frequencies and the licenses of these stations alone may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if sold today.

Programming consists of "King James-Only," Calvinist preaching, Bible teaching, light classical music, and hymns. Family Radio avoids contemporary Christian music and southern gospel. For a period of time in the mid 1990s Family Radio played a small amount of lighter contemporary Christian music as well as some mellow black gospel music mixed in with the traditional music they are known for.

Produced programming in-house from Family Radio includes "Open Forum" with Harold Camping taking phone calls from listeners about religion, "Family Bible Reading", "Family Bible Study" with Harold Camping, Sunday preaching by Harold Camping, "Christian Home", and "Family Radio World Wide".

Family Radio relies on listener-supported funding and is unaffiliated with any religious denomination. In fact, now Family Radio is opposed to the organized church in any form. Any outside programming ever aired on Family Radio always was aired free of charge and Family Radio never sold time to ministries. These ministries though buy time on other stations. The stipulation was always that these programs would edit out solicitations for donations and replace them with solicitations to give to Family Radio or to write the ministry in care of "Family Radio". Also local Family Radio stations, unlike other non-commercial stations, do not get a percentage of donations coming into a ministry from its listening area. Today though, almost no outside ministry is still aired over Family Radio.

Family Radio has never discussed politics directly, in the sense of campaigning for political candidates for whom a Christian should vote for or even suggesting that a Christian should vote. Family Radio has distanced itself from directly political social issues, which is one of the reasons "Focus on the Family" was removed back in the early 1980s long before other ministries were dropped. However, it does present programs that take strong positions on issues with political and social ramifications, such as advocating creationism and attacking evolution, which in the United States is a political and social issue.

Contents 1 History 2 1994? and Ultra Conservatism 3 Some Family Radio Stations up for sale? 4 External links 5 References

[edit] History

Harold Camping along with a few other Christian fundamentalists of Christian Reformed, Bible Baptist, and Conservative Presbyterian faiths got together in 1958 and purchased an FM radio station in San Francisco, California called KEAR, then at 97.3 MHz. The mission was to preach the traditional Christian gospel to the conservative Protestant community as well as witness and minister to others who are unsaved. Their doctrine was always that their form of Christianity was the one true teaching. Other teachings, including but not limited to Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and liberal, as well as moderate mainline Protestant Churches, all were Another Gospel. They believed these groups were made up of people that are not saved.

In addition they believed and still believe that people of non-Christian religions are unsaved as well since they reject the one path to heaven, Christ. They believed that Christ only died for the Elect and not for all mankind. They believe to get saved one must be drawn by God and that no one will accept Christ on his or her own will. They believed in all points of Calvinism.

The ministry was always non-commercial. In the 1960s Family Radio would acquire 6 other FM stations and 7 other AM stations (14 stations was the limit until 1984). Their flagship station is KEAR in San Francisco (now at 610 kHz, until 2005 at 106.9 MHz), but their second largest station is 94.7 WFME Newark, NJ licensed to serve the New York City radio market.

Over the years the stations all aired programming from production facilities in Oakland, California. They produced a few hours a day of teaching to air on all the stations. They also gave about 8 hours a day to national fundamentalist and evangelical ministries to air their shows free of charge over Family Radio stations. These ministries included "Focus on the Family" (which was pulled in 1985), "Freedom Under Fire", "Unshackled", "Back to the Bible", "Family News in Focus", and many others. Today most of these shows are cancelled. Also a couple hours a week local Family Radio stations aired church services from nearby fundamentalist churches in their areas. The rest of the time Family Radio played traditional Christian music by artists of different backgrounds but no Christian Rock, Pop or Southern. Prior to Satellite in the late 1980s, air personalities were all still based in Oakland. They prerecorded two weeks of shows on reel-to-reel tapes and sent them to each station where a board operator at each local station played these tapes. The ministries that aired free on Family Radio sent cassette and reel-to-reel tapes to each station which also played locally. Each local station had board operators. But morning and afternoon board opps on weekdays also did local news, announcements, played local traffic reports from phone line, and announced weather.

In the late 1980s the programming was delivered via satellite and so local stations then automated with local board operators in morning and afternoon drive only on each station. Local news was taken off the stations in favor of a national news from a Christian Newsource of some sort.

Musically in the '60s and '70s the station sounded typical of religious stations commercial and non-commercial. No religious station played Contemporary Christian music full time. Some commercial ones did so a few hours a week but CCM music was in its infancy until the early '80s.

In the '80s as commercial and some non-commercial Christian stations evolved to Contemporary formats, Family Radio shunned this music. They held to traditional music such as hymns sung by choirs, traditional singing groups, vocalists with the crooning '50s sound, softer black gospel songs, etc. In the '90s though they began mixing in some lighter contemporary Christian artists but dropped them by 2002. To this day all but a few local announcements are run out of their Oakland, California facilities.

[edit] 1994? and Ultra Conservatism

See Harold Camping.

In Camping's view, technology such as radio (particularly Family Radio) and the Internet could now present the Gospel to all parts of the world more effectively than the church could. ^{[citation needed]}

The controversial new teachings led to mounting criticism from former supporters and led many Family Radio staffers to resign as well as most outside programming produced by churches to leave the network. The loss of these programs from the Family Radio schedule has given Camping more airtime to express his teachings.

Harold Camping is currently teaching that the world will probably end in the year 2011 AD. Just as with 1994?, he has a hypothetical doubt attached to it.

Harold Camping has served Family Radio pro bono since 1959.

[edit] Some Family Radio Stations up for sale?

In 1995, in the wake of Mr. Camping's failed prediction of 1994 as the likely year of Christ's return, the license of FR's San Diego FM station was swapped for an AM radio station and a sum of cash. In 2005, the network's flagship station, KEAR (FM) was swapped in the same way. The Baltimore/Washington station, WFSI (FM) is widely rumored to be up for sale (as Family Radio bought 2 other local AMs, WBMD and WBGR) as are many of the network's other FM stations. ^{[citation needed]} The sales of stations have led some of FR's supporters, as well as its critics to believe that the network is financially troubled.

In light of these events, there are rumors that 94.7 WFME Newark, NJ, serving New York City, is being pursued for purchase by a group of investors wanting to air a Solid Gold Oldies music format over the station to fill a huge hole left from crosstown WCBS-FM's recent switch to Jack FM. Also rumors include a license challenge to WFME claiming that it no longer serves the public with Liberals as well as Conservatives and Evangelicals and even some Fundamentalists ready to back this. Other rumors include the speculation that other broadcast groups such as ABC, Greater Media, and Emmis are seeking to purchase the license of 94.7 as well. There is no evidence to back up these rumors.

[edit] External links

• Family Radio Website
• Website that supports Family Radio's teachings
• Harold Camping's Publications
• Website that supports Harold Camping's teachings
• Website critical of Camping's teachings
• Christian Research Institute refutation of Camping's teaching

[edit] References