An article in USA Today highlights the new impetus behind Catholic radio in the US. Coincidentally, part of the cover story for the January Catholic World Report is about Catholic radio, its past, present, and future, as well EWTN’s 25th anniversary, Raymond Arroyo’s new book on Mother Angelica, Catholic podcasting, and Spanish Catholic radio.
Anyway, the USA Today article quotes and includes a photo of an old friend from Steubenville, John Lillis, who now works as a consultant to people setting up Catholic radio stations. Funny story: John directed and I wrote a script for a sitcom about 5 guys who go back to school to study theology at a midwestern Catholic college. (Yeah, they say write what you know. It was fun to do and fairly easy to write since I basically did caricatures of the funny and amazing people I already knew.)
Catholic Family Radio has some good programs, but too much of its air time was devoted to minor league conservative talk shows, a market that was already mostly saturated by the likes of Rush and popular local shows.
The main problem with CFR was that it didn’t have enough C and F its mix.
I’m indebted to CFR for introducing me to Al Kresta and Catholic Answers, but the CFR project could have benefited from more piety and less politics.
Denver’s Annunciation Radio at http://www.annunciationradio.org/ has been trying to get on the airwaves to replace CFR, but to my knowledge the project has somewhat stalled.
Don’t forget Relevant Radio which can be streamed over the Internet, Relevant Radio.
I just finished the book on Mother Angelica. It was excellent although it did make me want to write an uncharitiable letter to Cdl Mahoney in LA.
ahh, I dream of “Dorothy Day Radio”, a Catholic Station with no bows to the Limbaughs of the world.
Massachusetts needs one of these radio stations.
“ahh, I dream of “Dorothy Day Radio”, a Catholic Station with no bows to the Limbaughs of the world.”
Well, you have Air America…
If you are looking for a very good “Peace and Social Justice” radio, take look no further than Provoke Radio. It is out of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Excellent content and no one has ever accused them of being conservative!
Right now they have all of their shows archived, but I hear they are looking into podcasting.
Michael