The numbers inform one story about Ok-LOVE, the Christian radio community that began at a single station in Santa Rosa 40 years in the past and has mushroomed right into a coast-to-coast service that reaches a reported 20 million listeners per week.
They communicate to a broadcasting juggernaut, fueled partly by the demand for modern Christian pop and rock music, which amazingly took root in what Lifeway Christian Sources says is the least spiritual market within the nation. As we speak — on Easter Sunday, 2022 — it's the largest Christian radio community within the nation and the second-largest radio community of any sort.
However to the officers and on-air personalities behind Ok-LOVE and its sister service, Air1, it’s the non-public tales which are much more essential and assist outline why they do what they do.
These tales embrace Eric, a person who fled his household and his issues in North Carolina and, seeing no means out, had pushed to the Golden Gate Bridge in 2016 to finish his life. However earlier than that might occur, he found Ok-LOVE on his car radio and, though he’d by no means listened to the station earlier than, referred to as into the “Scott and Kelli Present” to share his story on the air. The consequence was an enormous outpouring of help from Bay Space listeners, with many calling in to ask Eric to their church. Tragedy was averted.
“It was simply unbelievable — solely one thing God might do, and it's nothing we might ever take credit score for,” recalled Scott Smith, a longtime co-host of Ok-LOVE’s noon present with Kelli Caldwell. “However that’s how God makes use of this ministry.”
Though Ok-LOVE’s on-air programming is dominated by the newest hits from such multiplatinum music acts as Chris Tomlin, Lauren Daigle, TobyMac and Lecrae, on-air personalities and staffers spend numerous time taking calls from a big selection of listeners, lots of whom are referred to what the community says is a fulltime ministry workers that offers with a median of 1,000 prayer requests and not less than one potential suicide scenario a day.
“We have now seen all the pieces from marriages saved to suicides prevented to simply primary professions of religion, the place folks’s lives modified as a result of they listened to a 3-minute track on Ok-LOVE,” says Invoice Reeves, CEO of Academic Media Basis, which operates the Ok-LOVE and Air1 radio networks.
The mix of music and ministry has paid off handsomely for Ok-LOVE, which is now primarily based in Rocklin, outdoors Sacramento, however is planning to finally transfer close to Nashville, the capital of the modern Christian music world.
The Ok-LOVE household consists of almost 500 stations in the USA, in keeping with Insider Radio, and it's in development mode. The community not too long ago acquired San Jose station KRTY-FM 95.3, which had been one of many space’s few remaining nation stations.
That’s along with the plethora of spots on the FM dial the place Ok-LOVE can already be heard within the Bay Space, together with 97.7 (San Jose), 107.3 (San Francisco), 88.9 (Berkeley) and 90.7 (Tracy). It can be streamed on-line at klove.com in addition to via its free app and different platforms resembling iHeartMedia.
Whereas listenership for terrestrial radio is on the decline general, modern Christian music is the medium’s No. 2 development space — simply behind traditional rock.
“I don’t suppose that’s a coincidence,” says Reeves. “I feel we live in a time the place individuals are simply hurting. When all of the issues that promise achievement don’t fulfill — you flip to the factor that does, which for lots of those people is their religion. And we try to encourage that and feed that.”
A part of it additionally has to do with the rising high quality of the music, says Kelli Caldwell, who has labored at Ok-LOVE for 16 years and co-hosts the mid-day present with Smith. Modern Christian music manufacturing is remarkably extra subtle than in previous years and matches what you hear in different codecs.
“They've introduced the standard to a degree that's simply mind-blowing,” she says.
And having a giant star sing about vulnerability and religion makes the style accessible to followers in ways in which many different genres can’t match.
Longtime Bay Space Christian music promoter Jon Robberson, who runs Celebration Concert events, says Ok-LOVE and the Modern Christian pop industries are two forces that feed off one another.
“Christian radio like Ok-LOVE is the ‘gasoline within the tank’ of music consciousness,” he says. “You possibly can have probably the most gifted singer or band singing probably the most superior track, but when it could possibly’t be heard, it’s like the most costly unique sports activities automotive sitting with no gasoline — it ain’t going anyplace!”
Academic Media Basis was based in 1982 by Bob Anthony Fogel, a former DJ at San Francisco powerhouse pop station KFRC who was trying to begin a Christian music station. The station’s first broadcast went stay on KCLB 91.9 FM within the Santa Rosa space on Oct. 15, 1982. Forty years later, Ok-LOVE can nonetheless be heard at that spot on the dial.
The station, which will get a considerable portion of its income from listener donations, depends on one other asset, says Reeves. At a time when struggle, political partisanship and anger dominate the media panorama, Ok-LOVE promotes positivity — actually. The community’s slogan is “optimistic, encouraging Ok-LOVE.”
“We have been attempting to be a spot of sunshine for them,” he says. “I feel that's what drives the energy of Christian radio right now.”
As Academic Media Basis and Ok-LOVE rejoice the fortieth anniversary, plans are afoot, Reeves stated, to develop the media footprint of the community. The group has already produced the movies “The Jesus Music” and “The Case for Heaven,” revealed a number of books, began a Ok-LOVE On Demand content material platform and hosted quite a few stay occasions.
“We simply suppose that there's a gigantic gap within the leisure marketplace for serving this viewers,” Reeves says. “And we’re leaping in ft first to assist fill that want.”
In the event you or somebody you recognize is combating emotions of despair or suicidal ideas, the Nationwide Suicide Prevention Lifeline affords free, round the clock help, data and sources for assist. Attain the lifeline at 800-273-8255.