Religious radio across America

Faith-based radio has a long history in America, dating back to the earliest broadcasts of Sunday services at the beginning of the 1920s. Today, there are more than 4,000 terrestrial religious radio stations in the United States, according to a Pew Research Center analysis from the Pew-Knight Initiative. That’s about a quarter of the roughly 17,000 AM and FM stations in the U.S. that are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. Almost all U.S. adults — 98% — live within the local coverage range of at least one religious radio station.

Against this backdrop, we set out to study the landscape of religious radio in the U.S.:

• How widespread are religious stations across the U.S. and in each state?
• Who listens to various types of religious programming and why?
• What kind of programming is broadcast on religious radio stations?

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