c. 1998 Religion News Service

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ Canada’s first Christian music station, The Bridge 600 of Greater Vancouver, has died, a victim of dismal ratings. It was five years old.

Now shaken and discouraged Christians wonder what the end of Christian programming at the AM radio station, owned by British Columbia Pentecostal billionaire Jimmy Pattison, says about the future of Christian radio in Canada.

The Bridge’s all-Christian format failed to lure in more than 44,000 listeners a week in a city of 1.9 million. That was less than 1 percent of the market share, leaving The Bridge at the bottom of Greater Vancouver’s 15 radio stations.

Canadian Christians say the demise of The Bridge in August sends a warning to the half-dozen other Christian stations struggling in provinces such as Alberta and Ontario. They had seen The Bridge as the premier Christian radio broadcast in Canada.

Bridge 600 executives like Gerry Siemens were excited in 1992 when the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) began giving in to Christian groups’ pressure and allowing single-faith radio stations to operate, as they do in the United States.

But the soft-rock Christian station never had the benefit of the large evangelical Protestant audience that exists in the United States. And it had to function within much tighter regulatory restrictions than those guiding a plethora of U.S. Christian stations, some of which are highly successful.

Like the rest of Canada, Greater Vancouver’s population is only about 8 percent Protestant evangelical, compared to more than 30 percent of the population in most parts of the United States.

Surveys by Angus Reid, one of Canada’s top pollsters suggest the total number of Greater Vancouverites attending church at least once a month is only 30 percent, or 475,000 people. And most of those are Catholic or mainline Protestant.

The Bridge’s devotion to middle-of-the-road Christian music by popular evangelical Christian artists such as Amy Grant and Michael Smith, didn’t appeal to a broad enough cross section of Greater Vancouver Christians, said Kevin Pollard, a former member of the Christian music group, Rhythm & News.

At the same time, it would have risked offending one Christian or another if it tried too many music styles, said Pollard.”Although there are a fair amount of Christians in Greater Vancouver, they’re not unified. They’re almost totally segregated,”he said.

But Pollard and others also say part of the blame for the station’s demise flows from the excessive restrictions placed on it by the CRTC, Canada’s broadcast regulator.

Until it caved in to pressure from Christian groups wanting all-Christian stations in the early 1990s, the CRTC had a policy of requiring every radio and TV station to air a variety of religious and political points of view.

Focus on the Family official James Sclater said Greater Vancouver evangelical Christians wanted more than just music on their Christian radio station. He said they wanted talk, news and analysis.

But the CRTC gave The Bridge a license on condition it specialize almost exclusively in Christian music, Sclater said from Focus on the Family’s Canadian headquarters in downtown Vancouver.

Focus on the Family programs, which emphasize conservative approaches to child-raising, abortion, homosexuality and divorce, made up most of The Bridge’s miniscule talk component.

The CRTC, unlike U.S. broadcast regulators, also denied The Bridge the chance to directly solicit donations from listeners, said Bridge 600 official Gordon Eno.

Donations are a key means of support for U.S. Christian broadcasters, he said, including a radio station based in Lynden, Wash., called Praise (106.5 FM), which broadcasts across the international border into Greater Vancouver and was a key competitor of the Bridge.

But Pollard said he is bothered Christian radio can do so well in the United States and not in Canada. One Christian station in Dallas, KLTY, claims 500,000 listeners, he said.”That is what’s so baffling,”he said.”The Bridge used the Dallas station as a guide when it set up its programming. The Bridge was considered one of the top stations in North America in terms of quality. And now, because of apathy, it’s gone.” The station, officially known as CKBD, has switched its format to an easy listening standards approach featuring such singers as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand.

DEA END TODD