Ode to… UK Christian radio

15 years after setting up a radio station aimed at Christians in and around
London, Premier Christian radio, The UK’s biggest Christian radio station
launches a national service through Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB)
To mark this historical day in the development of Christian media
in the UK here’s a look at how Christian media all started.

The first time i discovered Premier Christian Radio was probably around
2001 when I went on an evangelism mission around the East end of London.
It was all our friend in London listened to on his car stereo
as it crackled in and out on it’s MW frequency depending on how tall the office blog was that you were driving past at the time.. The great thing about Premier is they have always been one of the Christian media companies that are at the forefront of multi-platform media, because they have had so much
competition in the market and were only afforded a Medium Wave slot
they quickly made the most of the internet and started broadcasting
around the world. As the years passed they started utilising all possible
platforms including Satalite radio channels.

But, hold on! You have to go back over 10 years before the birth of Premier radio long before all this technology and DAB was concieved and the
Internet was in mass circulation and even before i was born, the foundations for Christian radio were being built. Here are two people I suggest were founding members of Christian radio in the UK. Tony Cummings (Cross Rhythms Music Editor), Chris Cole (Former CEO – Cross Rhythms Radio, Regional Director – God TV),

Chris Cole started the routes of Cross Rhythms radio in the mid 1980’s by presenting a Christian radio programme on Plymouth Sound. At this time the Communications act in Britain meant that the BBC and Commercial radio stations were legally required to provide religious broadcasting within their schedules, but there was no oppertunity for religious radio stations to exist in their own right.

Whilst all this was going on there was a man named Tony Cummings who had dropped out of school at the age of 16 with no qualifications, had set up his own black music fanzine until he became a Christian in 1980 and transferred his passion for the industry into the Christian sector. After a few years writing for Buzz magazine. In 1990 Tony launched Cross Rhythms magazine which was bought out by Chris Cole’s marketing company the following year. Also in 1991 Cross Rhythms took over the Umberleigh Rock Gospel Festival based down south which became a reputable summer festival for unsigned british Christian artists who had a ministry to nurture.
In 1998 Cross Rhythms went into partnership with United Christian Broadcasters (UCB), known for their hugely succesful daily devotional ‘The Word for Today’, to become a satalite baseed radio station

It’s 2002 in the Christian media timeline and personally I’ve started getting my own community radio gigs and i’m desperately trying to follow in the footsteps of these great media pioneers. In the Christian media scene Cross Rhythms are granted their own licence to broadcast as a Community radio station in Stoke-on-Trent and i go for a week’s work experience to get a feel for radio in 2004.

By now community radio is thriving and Christian radio is getting bigger and bigger year by year. Cross Rhthyms have a vision to see 10 community stations within the UK and build to toward that number by adding community radio stations in Plymouth, Teeside and Coventry to their network. Down in London Premier, who are still on the crackly medium wave that i discovered in 2001 succesfully bid for a DAB licence in the city. UCB lost out in the bid for a licence but have, in the last few years gained a number of local DAB licences around the north of England and expanded their output to a number of different niche stations at a cost of over £7 million per year.

The future of UK Christian radio.

The future looks good. For years Premier Christian radio have had a loyal audience and attracted big advertisers to support their work. They’ve raised the £650,000 needed to broadcast on DAB for a year and no doubt within the year they’ll pick up more followers who will also want to support the cause. But, that all depends on whether they can keep up the quality of programming and make it accesible to a wider UK audience. Early signs show that they are more creative, their music policy is broader and they are going to be a popular choice with Christians and non-Christians around the country.

Elsewhere around the country, Christian community radio stations still exist and are still being created although there is now a shift away from having ‘Christian radio stations’ to radio stations with a Christian ethos such as Alive Radio in Dumfries.

Personally, looking back to those Sunday Mornings hoping for something better, I feel that that has been acheived and there isn’t much more new as industry professionals that we can do. Maybe the aim now is to stop trying to saturate the market and getting one ahead of each other but support the people with the biggest influence whether it be Premier Radio’s national output or our local Christian community station.

Songwriting revival

This morning i started writing my first song for about two years. It’s been a while because for a year or so I was focussed more on establishing my media career and then personal situations meant that I struggled to hear from God. This latest song is all about our identity of Christ, following a teaching series at our church recently. Having led worship during that teaching series I realised there weren’t many songs written about our Identity as Christians so hopefully this will encourage the church.

The end of an Intern and the start of an exciting future

Back in June 2008 I left Lincoln and relocated to Birmingham in the space of six weeks to take up a job as a Christian media intern with freelance Journalist and Broadccaster, Mike Rimmer. Throughout the year I’ve broadened my skills in writing and production, and become a better, more interesting broadcaster. Also this year has given me a great insight into the Christian music and media industry. I’ve met loads of people great musicians and professionals throughout different levels of the industry and heard countless stories from people like the legendary Tony Cummings.
Recently I hosted a Press Conference with Graham Kendrick and other top artists at the ‘Big Church Day Out’ in Worthing, also interviewing artists who played on the second stage at the event. I’ve just returned from a weekend in Scotland training broadcaster’s for a new community radio station in Dumfries. You can find out more about that by visiting their website www.aliveradio.net

I’m continuing to work with Mike as his assistant, as well as the continued production for Cross Rhythms programmes and a new show we’re pioneering for American radio we’ll soon be looking forward to this years RSL at Grapevine celebration in August and creating more oppertunities for media work.

How NOT to promote your next album

If a producer or presenter discovers you on Myspace or anywhere else and requests a CD here’s NOT how to handle it;

1) Ignore the request or leave for months by which time you’ve been forgotten about

2) Ask the person to buy the CD or download it from a website, we don’t always have time to download things and we personally listen to 90% of the new music we get on CD in the car.

3) Send the CD without a case, trackisting or short bio with it. (some presenters/producers get hundreds of CD’s a month, they will need reminding who you are)

4) Send the CD if it doesn’t work!

Most of this advice  comes courtesy of a band who posted me their EP this morning. Unfortunately because it doesn’t work it went straight in the bin

What NOT to call your next album!

If your looking to record a new Christian album then you might want to read this because having worked in Christian music for a year now and looking through a whoe library of CD’s there tends to be a lot of repetition in Album titles and you may want to pick something more creative and original. So here’s the list of most popular album titles;

“Amazed” – Lincoln Brewster (2002) Brown Bear Music (1997)

“Beautiful” – Amanda Faulk (2007) Ryan Farish (2004)

“Best of/very best of” – … goes without saying dozens of mainly compilation albums with this name

“Blessed be your name” – Matt Redman (2005) Tree 63 (2008)

“Brand new day”

“Breathe”

“Chronology”  – Brian Haworth (1989), Third Day (2000,2006)

“Closer”- Dan Helen Mallarkey (1999) Sherwin Gardner (2004) Simon Godall  (2002)

“The Collection”

“Demo”

“The Early works/ The Early Years” – Don Fransisco, DC Talk, Keith Green, Seventy Sevens

“Gold” – Albums from Keith Green, Nicole Nordeman, Crystal Lewis, Sonicflood, CeCe Winans, Meet Jesus Music

“Grace” – Grace (1997) Joy Rose (2006) Margaret Becker (1996)

“Greatest hits” – Album titles of at least 19 artists

“Live/ Live in…” – Similarly to above this name has been over used

“One” – dropknee (2000) Indigoecho (1999) Paul Colman trio (2003)

“Revolution” – Used by Yfriday and many other youth orientated bands

“Shelter” – Love Justice (1986) Gary Chapman (1996)

“Treasure(s)” -

“Ultimate Collection/Under the influence”

Independent: Sherri Youngward

Independents’ day showcases music from Independent artists from around the world and can be heard on Cross Rhythms radio, Saturday nights from 11pm GMT

This week’s featured artist is: Sherri Youngward

Sherri Youngward is an American roots acoustic artist. She became a Christian when she was 18 and has recorded nine albums since 1997 including the Christmas album “The Sky can Still remember”, a beautiful mix of acoustic songs, some traditional, some original. The album that we’re featuring this week though is her 2004 recording “The words that you left me”.

Read the Cross Rhythms Review

Go to Sherri Youngward’s website,. http://www.sherriyoungward.com

Alive Radio

Location: Dumfries, Scotland this is a group of churches broadcasting on aliveradio.net

Vision: To launch a 24 hour station early in 2009 after having produced restricted radio broadcasts over the last three years.

Impact: There’s currently no official measure of how successful the station are, but to have been granted a full time licence and have been working at it for three years from scratch means that there they must be a team of promising and committed broadcasters.

To find out more go to http://www.aliveradio.net

Email: mail@aliveradio.net

Join the March of Repentance

A new Christian initiative is being planned in London for July 18th called ‘The march of repentance’. The aim of the march through London to the House of Lords is to “Repen of our own lack of witness” and “Pray for courage to end our silence”.

The march is the vision of a friend who I trust and admire greatly. To me this feels like it will have a cultural impact just like March for Jesus did in the early 90’s and the Make poverty history campaign rally did a few years ago in Edinburgh.

You can sign to the event through facebook and take a look at all the details at the website www.repentuk.com

Interesting link;

How metrosexual is the worship leader in your church?

http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2008/06/269-understanding-how-metrosexual-your.html

I’m glad to say that I only score +3, although there are certain lifestyle changes i’d like to make that would make it higher but I don’t think i’m in any danger of being metrosexual

The answer to Jade Goody’s legacy? donate to charity

London rapper, ‘Triple – O’ is working on releasing a single called “Dear Jade (A rap tribute to the late Jade Goody) to raise money for a cancer charity (likely to be Cancer Research UK) You can see the visual tribute via youtube;

The youtube video has had 12,000 hits within a few days. Incidently you can also find more information on this via the facebook group ‘Dear Jade (A tribute to Jade Goody)

The audio single is likely to be released withing the next few days. Check back soon for more details.