[Community Radio] Christian Community Radio

[Richard]

Hi. I have an opportunity of helping with a Christian community radio
station, but am starting from scratch.

I hope I'm understanding things. I understand that unless radio station has
a very broad progamming content, it can never hope to have a target market
consisting of everyone in the geographical area. And I suppose often a radio
station does not even try to appeal to everyone in the boundaries of the
coverage area of the transmitted signal.

As for Christian radio stations: It seems to me that the target market is
probably practicing Christians.  I think they are the group whom Christian
radio stations seeks to meet the needs of most.  If that is the case, then I
suppose the listening audience is quite small, I mean, how many practoicing
Christians are there in a town say of 50, 000? Less than 1000? (I wonder who
would have this data).

Okay, let's say that the audience in a town of 50,000 is 500 people, I mean,
I think a high percentage of practicing Christians probably would tune into
a Christian radio station. I guess that this figure of 500 is sufficient
people to satisfy OFCOM? Or is it?

Would anyone else apart from practising Christians  listen to a Christian
station?  And why?  I think they might if the programming was right, but
what would be right programming?  I suppose local
information/news/phone-ins/ basically most anything with a local angle. Can
anyone point me to any market reasearch done of Christian Community radio?
For practicing Christians, it would seem you could hardly stop them from
tuning in, but non Christians, now that could be a problem for a Christian
community station.

If you had 500 people tuning in, could you bring about enough social gain to
satisfy OFCOM with such low numbers?

Any comments appreciated. TIA. Rich.