February 10, 1999
4 in 10 adults are listening to Christian radio
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___VENTURA, Calif.--Christian messages soar through the airwaves and into the radio receivers of almost four in 10 American adults each week.
___ Christian radio programming reaches 39 percent of American adults during a typical week, according to a new poll byBarna Research Group.
___"That amounts to a net audience of 75 million to 80 million adults per week," reported the organization's president, George Barna, a leading religion researcher.
___Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults listen to Christian teaching or preaching on the radio weekly, the survey found.
___Listenership increases with age. Forty-three percent of people age 53 or older tune in to preaching or teaching during a typical week. Other groups more likely to listen to these broadcasts are political conservatives (37 percent of adults who describe themselves this way listen weekly), women (34 percent), Southerners (39 percent) and African Americans (57 percent).
___The vast majority of preaching/teaching listeners are Protestants (75 percent), the survey showed. However, 10 percent are Catholics, and the remaining 15 percent classify themselves as atheists or adherents of non-Christian faiths.
___More than one-third (36 percent) of listeners do not define themselves as born-again Christians, researchers learned. They determined almost half (48 percent) of born-again adults listen to some form of preaching and/or teaching in a typical week.
___While preaching may claim the highest profile of Christian programs, Christian talk and music programs also enjoy widespread appeal, Barna learned.
___The survey showed that 32 percent of adults listen to talk and/or music programs in a typical week. As with preaching/teaching, the audience is strongest among women, people age 53 or older, political conservatives, African Americans and Protestants.
___Sixty-four percent of the talk/music audience is comprised of born-again Christians, researchers said.
___Overlap among program listeners is strong, the survey discovered, with 58 percent of Christian radio listeners tuning in to both preaching/teaching and talk/music in a typical week.
___When both Christian radio formats are taken together, audience loyalty correlates to age. The most loyal audience is comprised of listeners in their seventies and eighties, with 64 percent tuning in to some type of Christian broadcasting weekly. Among other age segments, the findings show decline--people in their fifties and sixties (54 percent), Baby Boomers (38 percent), Baby Busters, 23 percent.
___Related findings present a surprisingly positive picture for Christian radio, Barna noted.
___"Who would have imagined that more than 10 million people who never attend church services listen with some frequency to Christian radio broadcasting?" he noted. "Who would have guessed that in a typical week nearly as many adults living in the West listen to Christian radio as attend church services? Or that the same number of men listens to Christian radio as attend Christian churches in a typical week?"
___Christian radio is filling a spiritual niche, he added.
___"It appears that Christian radio broadcasts may fill a very significant religious need for millions of people--some of whom do not get all that they need from their church involvement, others of whom rely on non-church religious input for their spiritual development."
___Pollsters surveyed a random sample of 1,015 adults age 18 or older. The maximum sampling error is 3 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.Frontpage / Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!