Without Divine Intervention: Contemporary Christian Music Radio and Audience Transference

Abstract

A historical multistation, single market switch in radio frequencies provides the context for a case study analysis of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) radio. This investigation explores the interaction between a CCM-formatted radio station's listenership, salient station attributes, and promotional strategies that have been identified in the literature as potentially impacting on religious and secular audience transference. Although signal strength and inheritance effects contribute to audience transference, station branding, progressive self-promotion, Web site status, and corporate ownership proved to be particularly significant factors.