KNRY/1240 Goes To Immaculate Heart

[DavidKaye]

I thought the Catholic church was in bad financial straits, having had to settle child-molestation cases and sell parishes in order to do so. So now they're flush enough to be buying up radio stations? In this economy donations must be down, so what gives? I would think it far less expensive to stream on the web than to go around buying up broadcast stations in market after market.

That Catholic Church is the church, but the various religious orders such as the Franciscans, Congregation of Holy Cross (the Notre Dame University folks), the Maryknolls, Salesians, the Jesuits, and other orders are all independent organizations. And that's just the organizations of priests, brothers (which some people refer to as monks), and sisters. There are yet other independent groups within the church such as the Knights of Columbus, the Knights Templar, and some fairly mundane sounding groups as well. They're all independent, but in order to remain affiliated with the Catholic Church they have to obey the pope.

Immaculate Heart is one of those independent groups. Catholic Healthcare West, an operator of hospitals is yet another. There are thousands of these organizations.

 

[michael hagerty]

Right. And IHR is even more removed than that. It's actually a fairly small non-profit started by a Catholic businessman who thought if fundamentalist Protestants can use the radio for their message, so can Catholics.

The bio I read says the first station was the old KOLO in Reno (5kw at 920), once a big personality MOR that went Country in the early 80s and did okay until someone did it on FM, then went Spanish. The ratings and the revenues were so low, he was able to get it cheap, and built from there.

There's interaction with the Archdiocese, but from the looks of it, financially, it's a privately run non-profit whose mission is a religious message from a Catholic point of view.