History of Radio – Part 2

If you’re a Christian, nothing jumpstarts your day better than Christ-centered words or worshipful music on your radio.  Christian radio steers your mind and your heart in the right direction. We also have satellite radio and streaming.  If my station loses its signal, I have options. But back in 1910, just after The U.S. Patent Office awarded Marconi a patent for the invention of radio, (later revoked and awarded to Tesla), people were lucky to get any signal at all – certainly not in their cars, and especially not in their horse-drawn buggies!

In this blog, part two of our series, we go back to the beginning. Take a look back at Part One.

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
From 1906 to 1920-ish, a hodgepodge of wireless systems began cropping up under the common name “radio”. Many of them were church owned. Remember the old saying, “The Devil Is in the Details?” Well unfortunately, it was true for Christian Broadcasting. With the expansion of God-centered radio came untold torrents of legal wrangling. Education-based broadcasters and religion-based broadcasters fought over frequencies and struggled to define nebulous terms like “common good” and “entertainment”. Federal battles took place over such terminology, resulting in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, along with creeds, faiths, and the (still controversial) distinction between religion and education. The need for law and order was obvious. Out of necessity, federal regulation was finally defined by The Radio Act of 1927, which eventually lead to the formation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC).

In the 1920’s, as the battle for radio frequencies raged on, Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover, made valiant attempts to try and rectify regulatory power, commercial domestic broadcast services and interference problems, but his efforts were nearly fruitless. The Department of Commerce simply didn’t have enough political power. There seemed to be no way to restore order. These were “wild west” times for radio.

The Radio Act of 1927 was created to lasso everything into a neat, comprehensible package, transferable after one year to the Secretary of Commerce.  Radio regulation was handed over to the Federal Radio Commission, which gave them the power to deny broadcasting licenses, and to assign frequencies and power levels for each licensee. In 1934, the FRC was replaced by the FCC, which allowed for greater control and accountability to Congress.

GOD’S WORD, GOD’S POWER, GOD’S PLAN, GOD’S WORK
Here’s a tip of the hat—or a high-five—to some of the first radio stations to reach their community for Christ. Many of the hundreds-plus early stations sold out to commercial interests or simply folded, but there are a few who remain.  We’ll cover a sample of these hardy entrepreneurs.

KDKA:It was a cold December morning in 1920 when the Calvary Baptist Church of Pittsburgh broadcasted its first Sunday worship service over KDKA. Hot on their heels were Paul Rader, Charles Fuller, Donald Grey Barnhouse and other pastors and evangelists.  Fast forward five years. There were 600 radio stations operating in the United States by 1925 and only sixty-three of them were church owned, generally established by neighboring congregations specifically to strengthen local ministries.

PILLAR OF FIRE INC.– 880 kHz / 1500 watts. KPOF AM91 is Denver’s oldest local, listener-supported Christian radio station. They broadcast from the Big Red Castle which was built in 1893. Pillar of Fire Church acquired the castle and surrounding property in 1920 and they’re in full swing to this day.

FIRST METHODIST CHURCH OF LAPEER– 1500 kHz / 100 watts. They began broadcasting on December 6, 1926, via a homemade transmitter in the Methodist Protestant Church. Many radio ministries only operated on Sundays, and FMC was no exception. They are now WMPC, owned and operated by the Calvary Bible Church of Lapeer, Michigan. (Hence the letters WMPC). The church moved to its current location and changed the name to Calvary Bible Church. People still credit WMPC for being the oldest continuously operating Christian radio station in the United States.

KFGQ – A husband and wife operated a small radio station out of Boone Biblical College at 1310 kHz / 100 watts. Former resident Mary McConnell remembered them fondly on Ancestry.com:

“I grew during the 1940’s and 50’s across the street from the Boone Biblical College. This was a orphan’s home, and a home for the elderly. They had their own church and radio station called KFGQ. I believe they still have an FM radio station.”

MOODY BIBLE INSTITUTE started on 1080 kHz with 500 watts. They began broadcasting experimentally on September 5, 1941. Many credit them with being the country’s first non-commercial FM station.

KIIS FM: Have you heard of KIIS FM in L.A.? Believe it or not, they used to be KRKD, dedicated to evangelistic programming for the International Church of the Four Square Gospel. The Church continued its programming on KFSG-FM, which it purchased in 1949.

FAMILY LIFE RADIO– Listener-supported from the start
For young Warren Bolthouse, bringing Christ-centered Christian radio to his community in Jackson, Michigan was an exciting challenge. He had rigged together a transmission system with telephone wires, and the extent of his reach was limited to his neighborhood. In 1961, Warren began producing programs out of their basement. Shows like “Teen Time,” and “Happy Day Express” made up 20 hours of weekly programming on WIBM. In April 1966, Warren launched the Family Radio Evangelistic Corporation which would eventually become Family Life Radio. Today, Family Life Communications is alive and well.

BOTT RADIO NETWORK – Making a Difference
Dick Bott was practically born with a microphone in his hand. He started singing for a Child Evangelism group as a small boy in churches throughout Minneapolis. For money, he sold apples out of a wagon. His father was making $100 a week at a defense plant, and being a post-depression kid, he needed to figure out a way to make money too. After marrying Sherley Patterson at age nineteen, he began working for her father’s radio station selling advertising. Bott eventually caught the radio bug, and had visions of owning his own station. They sold their home and everything in it and purchased a station in Salinas, California for $250,000. And so began the story of Bott Radio.

K-LOVE– Humble Beginnings
K-Love started as KCLB, a single radio station that stood out for a number of reasons. It was one of the few full-time contemporary Christian music radio stations. Furthermore, KCLB was not easy to acquire. Radio personality Bob Anthony, in Middletown, California tried to purchase a station in San Francisco. After several unsuccessful tries, he ended up with a small, non-commercial radio station just north of San Francisco.  The first song Bob played on KCLB was “Praise the Lord” by The Imperials. God used a tragedy for good on September 12, 1988, when a 9,000-acre brush fire destroyed KCLB’s main transmitter.  KCLB relocated to Mount Saint Helena, where a more powerful transmitter was erected. The new location carried their signal as far as 125 miles away, and the rest is history.

THIS IS THE LORD’S HOUSE
Radio is part of God’s plan. The essential ingredients for transmission have always been built into His creation. God allows us to invent the technology we need to carry out His plan, but in His perfect timing. As broadcasters of God’s Living Word, Ambassadors of Christ Himself, we might consider asking ourselves on a regular basis, “Is our conduct as a Christian broadcasting entity bringing You glory in the way You intended? What part am I playing in Your history, Lord?”

ASV James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, neither shadow that is cast by turning.

REFERENCES:
blogs.loc.gov/law
Gary Richard Drum
ancestry.com
en.wikipedia.org
myflr.org
JF PTAK
spiritualpilgrim.net
nrb.org
moodyradio.org
afr.net
bottradionetwork.com
bbn1.bbnradio.org
klove.com

Andre-Marie Ampere (1775 – 1836), discovered the fundamental laws of electricity:

“How great is God, and our science is just a trifle!”

GOD’S PLAN
Christian Radio History wasn’t born of religious programming. Christian radio was part of God’s creative plan. He put into place the necessary elements and forces that we use to transmit messages over great distances, eventually fulfilling the prophecy that knowledge would move to and fro about the earth. His timing is in direct correlation with the development of technology, and only He determines when those new facets of technology are discovered and put into place.
INVISIBLE FORCES

“Smith” Radio Commentator (1922) ‘Radio has caught and brought to the ears of us earth dwellers the noises that roar in the space between the worlds.”

Legend has it that when scientist and Christian apologist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) witnessed an apple fall from a nearby tree, he had been searching for further evidence of God. God rewarded his pursuit fruitfully, you might say, by displaying His awesome power of gravity. It eventually proved what only crazies of the age had been proclaiming thus far … that there were indeed “invisible forces” in the air.

In the same manner, Christian physicist James Clerk Maxwell began studying God and light, which led him to formulate the Electromagnetic Theory of Light. That, in turn, helped him to prove that radio waves can exist. Around 1885, the Lutheran-born German scientist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894) actually detected and produced those radio waves. Hertz didn’t believe that his work would ever have any “practical application”. Of course he was wrong, and we use his name today to describe frequencies of electromagnetic waves – including sound waves.

British physicist and mathematician Oliver Lodge was also curious about harnessing invisible forces. In 1888, he conducted experiments that revealed electromagnetic waves could indeed travel along wires, which confirmed Maxwell’s findings. He went on to extensively to the development of the radiograph receiver.

By 1890, Édouard Branley, a devout Catholic, had always felt that he was in a profound union with God, especially while at work in his laboratory at the Catholic Institute. It was there, in his communion with God, that he discovered how to convert incoming signals to direct electromagnetic current … a crucial ingredient for true radio reception.

When Kentucky Christian-raised farmer, fruit grower, electrician and inventor Nathan Stubblefield (1860 –1928) conducted his “battery operated wireless telephone” transmissions, people took notice. His invention became the first to be used on a “mobile” platform. You might say, he invented the wireless phone. In 1908 he received a U.S. patent but was not successful in commercializing his invention, and he claimed it was stolen from him. Stubblefield did open the floodgates however. It is because of his work that people became thoroughly convinced that transmitting a wireless signal was possible.
REACHING GOD WITH PRAYER

“The more I work with the powers of Nature, the more I feel God’s benevolence to man; the closer I am to the great truth that everything is dependent on the Eternal Creator and Sustainer; the more I feel that the so-called science, I am occupied with, is nothing but an expression of the Supreme Will, which aims at bringing people closer to each other in order to help them better understand and improve themselves.” (Marconi, as cited by Maria Cristina Marconi).

Around the same time, a member of the Anglican Church named Guglielmo Marconi stared into the horizon and pondered about how the human mind could bridge any distance, even reaching God in prayer. He was constantly writing about his amazement of God’s creation, and how it was intertwined with science. You might say, Marconi was the first to envision religious broadcasting. With that goal in mind, he began to experiment. Incorporating ideas from Hertz and Branley, he was able to transmit a radio signal across the Atlantic in the form of Morse code. He was also the first to record reception of a Morse code signal. Although the technology existed to transmit human voice, the amount of power needed just wasn’t available yet.
THE RACE FOR RADIO
Encouraged by his success with Morse code, Marconi went back to the drawing board. After much hard work, he was awarded a patent for radio for his improvements in transmitting electrical impulses, signals, and the device by which they were sent. Then, acting quickly, he established the first patented radio “factory” on the Isle of Wight, England. But, he wasn’t the only one to jump the starting gate.
In Australia, an Anglican believer named William Bragg was conducting transmissions as early as 1897. And in Colorado Springs, an exceedingly brilliant scientist and inventor named Nicola Tesla had discovered a way to transmit electrical power wirelessly, and was preparing to build a transmitting tower at Wardenclyffe on Long Island.
The race for radio was on.

“The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.” – Nicola Tesla

(Prior paragraph introduced Tesla, so this is redundant.) One day Tesla detected a series of repeating signals that he thought were from outer space. Experts say he picked up Marconi’s signals all the way from England, but Tesla attributed them to possible communication from another planet.
AND THE WINNER IS …
Tesla did build his Long Island transmitting tower, but ran out of funds. He eventually went bankrupt and couldn’t continue his research. The jury is out on whether Tesla actually beat Marconi, and a patent battle ensued which lasted for years. After Tesla’s death in 1943 the US Supreme Court ruled that Marconi’s radio patents were invalid and awarded the patents for radio to Tesla.
A VOICE IS HEARD
Robert Millikan (1868 – 1953), great American physicist, Nobel Prize 1923:

“I can assert most definitely that the denial of faith lacks any scientific basis. In my view, there will never be a true contradiction between faith and science.”

On December 23rd, 1900, Canadian born inventor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden sent his voice over a 3+ mile distance. School textbooks are clear that he was the first to send audio through the air via electromagnetic waves. This was not, however, a public broadcast.

Textbooks report that On Christmas Eve, 1906, Fessenden became the first person to make a public radio broadcast. But the textbooks may be wrong. While he did make the broadcast, he never intended it to be public. It was supposed to be an invitation-only demonstration. The legend states that ships at sea picked up Fessenden’s signal (on 5 kHz AM) as he played O Holy Night on the violin and read a passage from Luke Chapter 2. Public or not, the heavens did indeed declare the glory of God on that night.

His transmission proved that it was possible to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) … to share the gospel to the ends of the earth. Unfortunately, historians haven’t been able to find the official ship’s log or any written record. So, although Fessenden’s Christmas Eve message is widely believed to be the first radio transmission of this nature, the written record credits New Yorker Lee De Forest (and other lesser-known men) with this honor.

Around the same time in Australia, Ernest Fisk of Amalgamated Wireless conducted an isolated experiment in which, some claim, the first music was transmitted.

In part two, we’ll delve into the fascinating stories behind Christian Broadcasting networks.

REFERENCES
encyclopedia.com
oldradio.com
Kimberly A Dusendorf
Gary R Drum
famous scientists.org
radioworld.com
wikipedia.org
aleteia.org
history.com
bbc.com

MAP OUT YOUR COURSE
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.~ Matthew 6:33

As Christians, our aim above all else, should be The Kingdom of God. We seek it above all things, and then all things will be added unto us. That’s because as Christian leaders, we are representatives of Christ. And, Christ is the headship of all.

What does that mean? The answer is more difficult than you think. It is diametrically opposed to much leadership advice you will ever hear anywhere, except one place … the Bible.

Here it goes. You have to remove yourself, your desires, your emotions and your attachment to certain plans from the navigational process. Only by emptying ourselves of all personal penchants can we truly love others as God intended, and lead them into everything God has for your company. This step usually takes awhile to get it right. The next step is even more difficult. Once you’ve emptied yourself, you show up, stand in place, a humble and empty vessel, and God does the rest.

TAKE STOCK

When taking stock of the people placed in your charge, you would do well to first examine the skills of the twelve disciples.  As a Christian broadcasting entity, the content you broadcast will help make disciples of both your team andyour listeners. They will, in turn, then spread the Gospel to all nations.

Let’s look at the disciples. Andrew and Peter were fishermen. James and John not only made fishing nets, they owned their own business. Matthew was a tax collector, otherwise known as a publican. At the time, a publican was despised by the people and considered a traitor. A tax collector’s money couldn’t even be tithed at the temple. Simon the Canaanite was a zealot. He was fiercely loyal to his faith and Israel. Thomas, Bartholomew (Nathanael), Philip, James (the son of Alphaeus), and Judas (Thaddaeus) were either tradesmen or fishermen, but the records don’t reveal anything specific. You’ll want to take note that Judas Iscariot, whom Jesus entrusted as treasurer, is the only disciple who had financial security issues.

A CREW OF EXCELLENCE

Okay … You’ve analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of your current crew. Maybe you’ve even had them take a survey or two. Most companies and ministries stop there. But that’s not even half of the equation. According to the Bible, the gifts₁ are important. But they are small, small things, compared to a “more excellent way”. Paul nearly negates the gifts in his letters to the Corinthians.

“But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way.”
~ 1 Corinthians 12:31

The Bible doesn’t stop at the gifts, and neither should you. Paul goes on to say that there is a more “excellent way” to operate as a Christian.

Of course, the dividing line is LOVE. Since we can’t see or judge an employee’s heart, we look for the Fruit of the Spiritas evidence of God’s love. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The Bible says that if these are evident and increasing, they will keep a person from being ineffective in the Kingdom of God.  (2 Peter 1:5-9).

Bearing fruit is NOT the same as exercising gifts  (1 Corinthians 13:1).  Only those who humble themselves and become empty vessels can truly do the will of God  (2 Corinthians 4:7), (Matthew 7:21-23).

Pray and ask God to do His work in your life and in the life of your team.