I’m curious as to what degree religious content is broadcast on terrestrial radio stations outside the US. By “religious content” I mean religious music (particularly Contemporary Christian Music), religious instruction/social commentary (similar to what Focus on the Family does), and/or straight-up preaching. Is there a station in Sydney broadcasting Chris Tomlin, Rebecca St. James, and Jars of Clay all day? Perhaps a station in London pumping out more old-timey gospel music and hymns? Round-the-clock preaching in Buenos Aires?
And you don’t have to remind me that the US is significantly more “religious” than much of the rest of the First World; I already knew that.
I’m curious about this too. There’s an ungodly (hehe) number of religious tv and radio stations here in Texas. I can’t remember exactly how many but I had to remove between eight and twelve channels from the dish network guide. Scanning through the radio dial, it seems like every other station is religious programming.
There are several religious radio channels here in Panama. They include traditional religious music, contemporary Christian rock/pop, sermons, and preaching. (I would guess they include both Catholic and evangelical Protestant, though I usually don’t listen long enough to distinguish them.) When I was in Belize I had trouble finding much besides religious programs on my car radio on a Sunday morning.
As far as I know, there are two religious radio stations in France : one catholic and the other muslim. I believe (not sure) there’s also a Jewish radio, but more communautary than religious.
On the other hand, weirdly enough given the whole laicity thing, the public service television brodcast religious programms during all of sunday morning (relions covered being Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, all protestant churches grouped together, possibly the Orthodox Church (can’t remember) and catholicism that gets the largest share of the pie, including a mass broadcasted every week.
In the UK there’s a Christian channel on my cable. I’ve never watched it, but I’ve caught 5 second pieces as I’m channel hopping. It seems to show a lot of American stuff. Maybe it is an American channel, I don’t know.
Here in Canada, we have Vision TV (a cable channel) that is ecumenical: among its programming offerings that I am aware of are shows for Roman Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, Sikhs, and Jews. I presume other religions are represented on the channel also, but as I don’t tend to watch it, I don’t know for sure.
Locally, we have a Christian radio station that plays mostly current Christian pop and rock. The hosts are fairly inoffensive, announcing the music, giving the weather, stating timechecks, and so on. There is little to no preaching by the hosts, though the station does buy some spoken-word programming where the preaching ramps up.
When I was a kid, I used to listen to their station on shortwave (but only as a DX target, not because I cared about what they were saying) but I haven’t heard them in years, since I don’t do much DXing anymore. Your post made me wonder, so I Googled it.
New Zealand has Radio Rhema. Fairly inoffensive I believe.
We also get some US evangelical programming on TV - Your Day with Benny Hinn. Mind you, it’s on at 4 in the morning, so you need a PVR or get up early.
Germany seems to have a fair amount of religious programming, judging by the broadcasters’ websites. Deutschlandfunk has some kind of Mass or sermon every Sunday, IIRC. The denomination more or less alternates between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism–the latter usually meaning Lutheranism. A good part of the program’s content is the organ and choral music, and this may well attract many listeners who otherwise might pass it over.
IIRC the word Evangelisch does not mean Evangelical, as Americans understand that term, but simply Protestant.
In my travels, the places that come close to the American south for religious broadcasting are parts of the Middle East like Kuwait with many television programs and radio stations dedicated to Islam.
