Radio Listening

The first radio broadcast had auspicious beginnings. On Christmas Eve 1906 the first wireless voice transmission broadcast readings from the Scripture. From this radio has evolved internationally into a full spectrum of human voices that reflect and reinforce various subcultures and lifestyles as well as latent and dramatic revolutions. The pervasiveness of radio can be illustrated through an adaptation of Deut. 6:7-9:

Let your children listen to it at all times. Listen to it at home, at work. Listen to it when you get up and when you lie down. Bind it on your head. Listen to it while you walk and while you jog. Listen to it in every room of your house, in your car and in your office.

The Company We Keep

In essence, radio is a company of strangers to whom we show hospitality. Those we walk with or stand beside or sit next to may be the wicked or sinners or scoffers (Psalm 1). They are guests we invite into the private rooms of our heart and mind, sometimes to receive advice from, sometimes to share our moods with, sometimes to escape through. While at first it is they who entertain us, we soon find ourselves entertaining them, singing their praises to acquaintances or lamenting when we lose them outside our cities. Since the company we keep reflects and influences whom (or what) we love, as people in Christ we must examine carefully the radio company we keep to monitor if such friends are nurturing our love of God (Deut. 6:4-6; 1 Cor. 15:33).

Radio brings about and reinforces groupings in society through each individual station’s choice of a market position. A station’s radio presentation results from its mixture of four kinds of communication: songs, talk, news and commercials. Among stations in a culture, the ratio of music to information at any given time may reflect the nature and stability of the society. Within nations in distress, more information may dominate the radio; with greater leisure, more music may be heard.

The sum of the parts is a radio station’s format. The radio station’s persona attracts a group of like-minded people. Radio stations can become leaders in articulating the perspectives and language of various subcultures. To understand the power and authority in the heavenlies (Ephes. 1:21; Ephes. 3:10; Ephes. 6:12) exercised through radio stations (especially with non-Christian formats), we must analyze each of the four elements.

Radio Songs: Stories in Lyrics Among Peers

Individuals exercise personal tastes when they play their favorite song or music video. In listening to a radio station, however, an individual listens to songs that have been recommended for airplay by record promoters in the business of shaping profitable “star” franchises and selected for broadcast by program directors trying to attract the largest audience.

An individual also listens to the radio as part of a community emotionally drawn into the world presented through the accumulated stories in the lyrics. The impact from listening to such suggesting, beguiling stories can be considerable, since identification with people in stories is an element in the shaping of personal character (as through imitation of persons in the stories of the Bible). Indeed, the power of songs on a radio station is its persistent solicitation and nurture of a peer group of listeners who are evolving similar attitudes toward love. Most radio songs are about relationships, especially the waxing and waning of love. Even nonvocal music frequently harks back to originals with love lyrics (excepting certain rock, classical and alternative music).

Certain musical genres may tend toward a masculine (country) or feminine (adult contemporary) perspective or toward a youthful (rock) or intellectual (jazz, classical) bent. Whether male or female, young or old, cerebral or emotive, the person in Christ should critically examine the stories being sung in light of the grand cosmic story of Christ’s love for the church (Ephes. 5:22-33) and in comparison to the shape of a life obeying the command to love neighbor and enemy. For the person in Christ, the normal descriptions of musical styles (country, pop, rock and so on) are not as important as being alert to the conduct being presented as acceptable between men and women in the cumulative story line of the radio station’s canonical lyrics. The songs’ stories of reconciliation or separation between humans is, of course, incomplete (and misleading) without the story of reconciliation to the Father through the Son’s faithfulness and without the experience of spiritual blessings in Christ here and in the heavenlies (Ephes. 1:3; Ephes. 2:6).

Radio Talk: Drama, Announcing and Dialogue

Before other electronic media existed (for example, television, video home system (VHS), computer), the storytelling function of radio songs was much enlarged by the storytelling in dramatic presentation. Early American radio is remembered for its radio theater (for example, the “War of the Worlds” broadcast) and its radio crime stories, which elicited protests about the effects of such violence upon children. With few exceptions, such as Prairie Home Companion’s tales of Lake Wobegon, stories on the big and small screens have replaced stories from the radio theater.

Sometimes called deejays or disc jockeys, announcers (air personalities) serve the important function of stitching together the music fabric in such a way that the listener recognizes and identifies with a certain style. Fashions do change, but the popular announcers, whose characteristic pitch and timbre remain, promote loyal listenerships. Their interpretive comments on song or weather or events are not unimportant; they weave a web of norms that over time can raise or lower the listener’s embarrassment quotient, that is, the ability to blush and feel shame.

Without television’s visual images to seduce, distract or possibly misdirect, talk radio is sometimes considered as a better medium for argument and dialogue about ideas. But the person in Christ must understand this electronic Areopagus for what it is: a forum for entertaining and often sensational topics that the radio host controls. Not only must believers evaluate how the topics relate to kingdom concerns (Matthew 5-7), they must resist sitting with radio babblers, Christian or not, who are false prophets or scoffers.

Radio News: Selection, Entertainment and Immediacy

Talk radio reacts to the news of the day. The human ear has an itch for news, even though there is nothing new under the sun in human behavior. Since what is heard in radio newscasts frequently becomes the subject of conversation at mealtime, the person in Christ must discriminate what things in the news are really worthy of consideration (Phil. 4:8).

Music stations in particular most frequently take the news they report from newspapers. What is written in the wire service is, of course, not just any news or all the news, and certainly not the most significant news. What is “fit to print” reflects the hearing and biases of the reporter and editor and is filtered again through the radio announcer, who excerpts or rewrites and reads. Time to digest and gain perspective is unavailable.

Music stations also report as many news stories as possible as briefly as possible. Despite radio’s immediacy, through its collapse of spatial distance the listener rarely has adequate social connections to the events or the places, much less to the witnesses. The listener must scramble to evaluate what is true and what is significant. Hearing of political intrigue or threats from nations or communities or individuals, the person in Christ—remembering that God sits in the heavens laughing at the pretensions of nations and rulers (Psalm 2)—is steadied in prayer that the Father’s will be done and kingdom come.

Radio news is chosen with an ear to what is most interesting and entertaining to the station’s particular listenership. From a steady diet of such radio news, table talk can easily become preoccupied with issues from the domain of the flesh (Romans 8:5; Galatians 5:19-21). Daily attentiveness to the ways of the righteous (Psalm 1) and the kingdom of God (Psalm 2) in the book of Psalms can provide salutary correctives to the predisposed topics suggested by radio news.

Radio Commercials: Desire, Need and Preference

The interest of companies in advertising on the radio testifies to radio’s reach into target markets and to the power of repetition. The marketability of radio advertising has led to the viability of private ownership (licensing) of radio stations rather than sole government control.

All advertising attempts to either change desire into need or impartiality into preference. A Christian’s stewardship can be either aided or misdirected through radio advertisements. To the person in Christ the desire for and use of possessions are fundamental barometers of faithful obedience and disclosures of what is loved and served (Matthew 6:24-34; Acts 3-6; 2 Cor. 8-9). A thankful heart to the Father, who richly provides everything for our enjoyment, can promote habits of generosity and protection from overreaching (1 Tim. 6:17-19), no matter the level of enticement in the commercial.

Listening to the Radio in Faith, Love and Hope

Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). The word of Christ is gospel, as news and as story. For the one who listens to the radio, leisure and escape are mediated through the news it reports and the stories it sings. At times, the good news (Romans 1:16) and the story of fulfilled events (Luke 1:1), that is, the gospel, contradict and challenge the news and stories on radio. At other times, the news and stories on radio illustrate the conviction that God has imprisoned all in disobedience in order to be merciful to all (Romans 11:32; compare Romans 1-3).

The refrains of radio love songs are influential tutors. The attractions and desires between a man and woman are powerful and naturally find expression in poetic songs, as even in Scripture (Song 1-8). The understanding of Christ’s love for the church does, however, set an encompassing perspective on God’s way of achieving unity and reconciliation while issuing challenges to competing recommendations about relationships. Since the defining struggle is not really against flesh and blood (contra most stories on radio) but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenlies (Ephes. 6:12), the presence of Christ at God’s right hand raises the confidence that indeed loving one another and maintaining unity will effect God’s eternal peace plan.

Radio can and does offer oases in wilderness wanderings. Our eating and drinking and working (Eccles. 2:24) can be enhanced through listening to the radio. Its pleasures are, as pleasures are, immediate and gone with the wind. As with any ephemeral or short-lived diversion, hope for the longer journey may go begging. Yet hearing about tragedies and dilemmas in far-flung places need not intensify frustration and helplessness in the heart of the believer. Hope is manifest and expressed in prayer, even while the Spirit’s anticipations and delights make this creation’s decay all the more clear (Romans 8:18-27).

Radio whispers, sometimes shouts, various messages in our ears. The person in Christ walks, stands and sits with this companion. Some friends are better than others.

» See also: Advertising

» See also: Entertainment

» See also: Leisure

» See also: Mass Media

» See also: Music

» See also: Recreation

» See also: Storytelling

References and Resources

R. Banks, God the Worker (Valley Forge, Penn.: Judson, 1994); W. Brueggemann, Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988); C. Cook, All That Glitters (Chicago: Moody, 1992); D. Harned, “Visual and Aural Worlds,” in Images for Self-Recognition (New York: Seabury, 1977); M. Keith, The Radio Station, 3d ed. (Boston: Focal Press, 1993); J. Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior (New York: Oxford, 1985); M. Olasky, Prodigal Press: The Anti-Christian Bias of the American News Media (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1988); V. S. Owens, “The Radio and the Psalms,” in The Total Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980) 1-12; N. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Viking, 1985); R. Snow, “Radio: The Companion Medium,” in Creating Media Culture (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1983) 99-124; S. Starker, Evil Influences: Crusades Against the Mass Media (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1989).

—David Worley