Christian radio

Christian radio refers to Christian media radio formats that focus on Christian religious broadcasting or various forms of Christian music. Many such formats and programs include contemporary Christian music, gospel music, sermons, radio dramas, as well as news and talk shows covering popular culture, economics, and political topics from a Christian perspective.

In the first part of the 20th century, American revivalists saw radio as a tool for spreading the gospel. Christian radio pioneers included Aimee Semple McPherson, D. L. Moody, Charles E. Fuller, Donald Barnhouse, Walter A. Maier, Paul Rader, Lightfoot Solomon Michaux, and Percy Crawford.

In addition to preaching and sermons, other content such as news, children's programs, and gospel music were broadcast. Scholar Leah Payne states "In the 1920s, [Christian] broadcasters featured gospel quartets and trios who upheld the traditional social order and contrasted with images of 'bright young things' and flappers." Patriotism during the World Wars, teetotalism, and youth ministry were also common topics, and American celebrity culture spread to Christian radio, making celebrities of radio revivalists. Youth for Christ founder Torrey Johnson's radio program brought evangelist Billy Graham to American homes, helping launch his career.

Christian radio was also used to encourage political action; major broadcasters such as CBS and NBC, however, aired mainline Protestant content and avoided controversial themes. While Catholics, Jews, and mainline Protestants had their own broadcast organizations, various evangelical groups and fundamentalists banded together to form National Religious Broadcasters, which "spread conservative, white political views and premillennial dispensational theology". With its ability to reach significant numbers of people for potentially hours each day, at home and away, Christian radio had a formative impact on the direction of Christian media.

The Second Vatican Council's Decree on the Media of Social Communications (1963) sought to promote, "where it may be necessary", the establishment of Catholic radio and television stations.

Brokered programming is a significant portion of most U.S. Christian radio stations' revenue, with stations regularly selling blocks of airtime to evangelists seeking an audience. Another revenue stream is solicitation of donations, either to the evangelists who buy the air time or to the stations or their owners themselves. In order to further encourage donations, certain evangelists may emphasize the prosperity gospel, in which they preach that tithing and donations to the ministry will result in financial blessings from God. Others may have special days of the year dedicated to fundraising, similar to many NPR stations. Although the solicitation of donations and the sale of airtime may resemble a commercial enterprise, such actions do not necessarily constitute a call to action, and thus this does not forbid them from airing on noncommercial licensed stations in the U.S. A minority of stations, typically music stations, use the traditional model for music radio and allow traditional commercial advertising.

Numerous religious broadcasters own many of their own stations. In the U.S., religious radio stations are exempt from certain rules requiring radio stations to have some local operations, which allows them to have massive networks of transmitters covering far larger areas than a radio station would otherwise be allowed and may not face the same restrictions on the number of signals a broadcaster can own within one geographic area.

Most Christian radio stations transmit a mixture of Christian music and Christian talk and teaching.