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Family Radio (Family Stations Inc.), based in Oakland, California, is a non-commercial, 24-hour, listener-supported, Christian radio religious broadcasting network in the United States, founded in 1959 by Harold Camping. The network consists mainly of FM radio stations with non-commercial licenses (and a few commercial licenses used as non-commercial) and relays, with some AM stations and two television stations, plus WYFR shortwave in Okeechobee, Florida. The network produces programming in more than 40 languages.^{[1] [2]}

Programming

Family Radio's music programming consists mainly of early American hymnals and avoids other genres generally, including Contemporary Christian Music and southern gospel.

One of Family Radio's most enduring broadcasts is a call-in program called "Open Forum" in which Camping responds to callers' questions and comments as they relate to the Bible. "Family Bible Reading Fellowship", "Family Bible Study", "Sunday Preaching", "Beyond Intelligent Design", "Christian Home", and "Family Radio World Wide" are examples of other programming offered^[3].

Support

Family Radio relies solely on listener-supported funding and donations, and is unaffiliated with any other religious denomination^[4]. Outside programming broadcast over the Family Radio network is aired free of charge and Family Radio does not sell programming time to ministries. Unlike other non-commercial stations, Family Radio stations do not get a percentage of donations coming from ministries in Family Radio listening areas. Few outside ministry programs are aired over Family Radio presently.

Family Radio had net assets of approximately $122 million in 2007 ^[5].

Politics

Family Radio does not discuss politics directly, campaign for political candidates, or endorse candidates or issues. Family Radio attempts to distance itself from political social issues—one reason the "Focus on the Family" program was removed in the early 1980s. Nevertheless, Family Radio has presented programs that may have political and social ramifications, such as those that advocate creationism ^[6].

History

Family Radio (aka Family Stations Inc.) began obtaining FM broadcasting licenses on commercial frequencies early in FM's history, and by 2006, was ranked 19th among top broadcast companies in number of radio stations owned ^[7]. Presently, Family Radio's affiliates in New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and San Francisco are on prime commercial frequencies and the licenses of these stations alone may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if sold today.

In 1958, a Family Radio founder,Harold Camping, joined with other individuals of Christian Reformed, Bible Baptist, and Conservative Christian Presbyterian to purchase an FM radio station in San Francisco, California, KEAR, then at 97.3 MHz, to broadcast traditional Christian Gospel to the conservative Protestant community and minister to the general public. With the primary purpose of broadcasting doctrines of Christianity reflective of the teachings of the Holy Bible, Family Radio remained independent, never merging with any particular church organization or church denominations ^[8]

Through the 1960s, as a ministry, both non-profit organization and non-commercial, Family Radio acquired 6 additional FM stations and 7 other AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ^[9]. The flagship station for the network of both full-power and low-power translator stations is KEAR in San Francisco (now at 610 kHz, since 2005 at 106.9 MHz).Due to FCC rules regarding translator stations, the legal primary station for the translators was changed to KEAR-FM in Sacramento, after the former primary FM station in San Francisco was sold to CBS Radio^[10].

With the sale of KEAR-FM to CBS Radio in 2005, broadcasts from San Francisco moved to an AM radio frequency^[11]. Family Radio continues to own other large market FM commercial band stations, including WFME 94.7 MHz Newark, NJ in the New York City radio market.

Many program productions broadcast throughout the Family Radio station network were produced in the Oakland, California facilities. The production process involved pre-recording two weeks of broadcast programming on reel-to-reel tapes to be distributed to each Local Family Radio station. Free broadcast time was provided by Family Radio to national fundamentalist and evangelical ministries -- outside ministries' programs were sent in cassette and reel-to-reel tape formats to respective Family Radio stations for local broadcast. Each local Family Radio station had local board operators providing local news, announcements, local traffic reports via phone call-in, and weather reports broadcast during morning and afternoon weekdays. Outside ministry programs included "Focus on the Family" (which was pulled in 1985), "Freedom Under Fire", "Unshackled", "Back to the Bible", "Family News in Focus", and Beyond intelligent design. Local Family Radio stations broadcast church services from local community fundamentalism churches, and a remainder of Family Radio's broadcast time was allocated to traditional Christian music.

By the late 1980s, programming was delivered via satellite, local news was taken off the stations in favor of a various national news from a Christian news source, and presently, all but a few local announcements are produced at their Oakland, California facilities ^[2].

Music broadcast by Family Radio in the 1960s and 1970s was typical of religious stations, commercial and non-commercial. Some commercial stations played Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) for a few hours a week, but in the 1980s, as commercial and some non-commercial Christian stations evolved to Contemporary formats, Family Radio remained with traditional music formats such as choir hymns, various Gospel singing groups, vocalists of the 1950s, and softer urban contemporary gospel songs. In the 1990s, Family Radio included some lighter contemporary Christian artists but abandoned this direction by 2002.

Family Radio's text publications, and their telephone call-in program, "Open Forum," have continued to be based on the text of the authorized King James Bible^[12][13]. Prerecorded Bible readings broadcast over satellite, shortwave, radio frequencies and the internet are generally based on the Modern King James Bible^[14].

Teachings and beliefs

Central to Family Radio's and Camping's teaching is the belief that the Bible is the Word of God and completely true. However, he emphasizes, this does not mean that each sentence in the Bible is to be understood only literally. Rather, the meaning of individual Biblical passages needs to be interpreted in the light of two factors. The first is the context of the Bible as a whole. The second is its spiritual meaning: in Camping's words, "the Bible is an earthly story with a Heavenly meaning." In Camping's latest publication,"We are Almost There!"^[15], he states that certain Biblical passages point unquestionably to May 21, 2011 as the date of "Rapture", and October 21, 2011 as the end of the world.

Since leaving the Reformed Church in 1988, Camping has taught doctrines that may conflict with doctrines of the Reformed Church and other church denominations. The principles of Biblical hermeneutics upon which Camping frames his present teachings are:

1. The Bible alone is the Word of God.
2. Every Biblical passage must be interpreted in the light of the Bible as a whole.
3. The Bible normally conveys multiple levels of meaning or significance.^[16]
4. Numerology cannot be applied to numbers in the Bible when following the Biblical rules—some individuals have attempted to apply the concept to Camping's research.

Examples of how Camping's teachings vary from past conventional doctrines are:

• Departing from Calvinist doctrine, Camping teaches relative free will of humanity, and that humans are not totally depraved. However, he subscribes to the idea that salvation is unmerited, cannot be achieved by good works or prayer, and is a pure act of God's grace, and that those to be saved were chosen "before the foundation of the world".

• Departing from doctrines stating no one can know the time of Christ's second coming, he teaches that the exact times of the Rapture and the End of the World are to be revealed sometime towards the end of time: (Daniel 12:9-13) prophecy.

• Camping teaches that the "Church age" is over, that Satan now rules in all churches, and that no person remaining in a church at the time of the Rapture can be saved. He distinguishes his ministry from a "church", saying that Family Radio does not have a "membership" or hold "authority".

• Camping now teaches that "hell" is synonymous with "death" and the "grave", and that there is no everlasting torment.

Stations

Satellite

Eutelsat Hotbird 6 - 13 degrees east, Transponder # 89, Vertical LNB polarization; Satellite frequency: 12.597 GHz

• Family Radio Europe (English): channel 8222
• Family Radio International 1: channel 8233
• Family Radio International 2: Channel 8234

Astra 2B - 28.2° east, Transponder # 36, Vertical LNB polarization, Satellite frequency: 12.4024 GHz

• Family Radio Europe (English) : SID 9558

Full-powered stations

Family Radio can be heard in English from the following local international stations:

• Moscow, Russia, Center 1503 kHz AM
  • 11 pm to 12:30 am, and 8 pm to 9:00 pm

• Istanbul, Turkey, Radio Joy FM 89.6 mHz
  • 5 am to 8 am, and 8 pm to 11 pm

• Southern Africa, Maseru, Kingdom of Lesotho, 1197 kHz
  • 6 pm to 9 pm, and 10 pm to 1 am

Translators

In addition to its full-powered stations, Family Radio is relayed by an additional 54 low-powered translators:

Television

• WFME-TV, West Milford - Newark, New Jersey
• KFTL-CA, San Francisco, California

See also

• Harold Camping

References

External links

• Family Radio Worldwide Website
• Guide to receiving Astra satellites
• Guide to channels broadcasting on Astra satellites
• Website supporting Family Radio
• Discussion Website for Family Radio Listeners