LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2007, Page 61

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SYNOD REPORTS 61

KFUO Radio:

KFUO AM 850, which recently celebrated its 82nd birthday, is
the longest-running continuously operated religious radio station
in America, if not the world. Its sister station, Classic99 FM, is now
in its 60th year of service.

Taken together, the two KFUOs have amassed some !42 years
of mission and ministry. Just in the past year, the pair has combined
for more than 13,000 hours of high-quality broadcasting, reaching
150,000 listeners each week over the air and many more around
the world via the Internet.

This latter point bears emphasizing: Both KFUO AM and FM
now proclaim the mission of the Synod 24 hours a day around the
world via Internet audio streaming. No longer can it be said that
either is just a local station serving only the St. Louis market. To
the contrary, the stations today are truly worldwide—“We are
where you are,” we like to say—fulfilling a major dream of
KFUO’s founders.

The Synod’s radio ministry has long been at the vanguard of
communications technology. KFUO AM was one of the first high-
definition radio stations in the United States. Now, thanks to the
Internet, KFUO talk shows, worship services, devotionals, Bible
studies, and classical- and sacred-music offerings are available on-
demand to anyone, anywhere, anytime. A person can listen just as
easily and clearly to KFUO in Sydney, Stockholm, Sao Paulo, or
San Francisco as he or she can in St. Louis.

KFUO AM’s premier national radio program, “Issues, Etc.,”
travels about the United States, broadcasting from churches and
other institutions. This and other select AM programs are distrib-
uted to more than 750 radio stations in North America. Meanwhile,
Classic99 FM, long considered a major protector and patron of the
kirche musik of Johann Sebastian Bach, continues its broadcasts
and recordings of the renowned “Bach at the Sem” series from
Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

Again—it bears repeating once more, especially for those not
yet disabused of the notion that KFUO is merely a local St. Louis
operation—these and all other programs and music on both the AM
and FM dials of KFUO now can be heard around the world, 24
hours a day, via the Internet. We regularly hear from missionaries,
military chaplains, soldiers, members of our partner churches over-
seas, college students and professors, and many others in all walks
of life saying how much they appreciate and depend on the min-
istry of KFUO. With the Internet, we stand at the brink of a whole
new era for KFUO. With the Internet and other technologies such
as satellite radio and high-definition transmitters and receivers, the
sky is literally the limit for LCMS radio ministry.

Mindful of the storied history and exciting future of KFUO, the
Synod’s Board of Directors (BOD) in February 2006 declared a
five-year moratorium on any further discussion of the potential sale
of either KFUO AM or FM. (The notion of selling especially the
valuable license of Classic99-FM had been an almost perennial
topic of conversation among some since the early 1980s.)

The BOD, in “commend[ing] the staff of KFUO radio for its
service to the Lord and His Church,” said the Synod “finds itself
crossing the threshold of a time of new opportunities for radio mis-
sion and ministry due to advances in communications technology.”
It said that by sparing KFUO and the BCS from operating “under
the cloud of uncertainty under which KFUO has been forced to op-
erate for the past more than 20 years,” the stations and the BCS
will be better able “to concentrate efforts on making fullest use of
new communication advances for communicating the Gospel.”

As demonstrated previously, the old argument that KFUO ben-
efits only those within the greater St. Louis listening audience no
longer obtains.

Another argument—that although the classical music on KFUO
FM is nice, it’s not really a valuable Christian service to the com-
munity—would find plenty of people who'd beg to differ.

Classic99 plays classical music, yes, but a good part of that
music is sacred music. A good part of that music is inherently spir-
itual and often outwardly so. Have you listened to KFUO FM on
Sunday mornings? Have you listened at Easter and Christmastime
and during other festivals and high spots of the church year? Have
you heard great choirs singing the hymns of Luther at Reformation
time? If you have, you know that listening to Classic99 can be a
religious experience, and a Lutheran one at that.

What about all the other classical music heard on KFUO FM,
though? What about the music that isn’t quite so Lutheran, that
isn’t Bach or Mendelssohn or Buxtehude? Does the Synod have a
place, a proper role, in providing the public with the works of
Beethoven and Brahms, Mahler and Mozart, Vivaldi and Bizet?

We think it does. We think the church provides a noble service,
especially in the face of the growing decadence and coarseness of
our society, in giving the public something wholesome, tasteful,
beautiful, and worthwhile. We think the Apostle Paul speaks to this
in Phil. 4:8: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble,
whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about
such things.”

Admittedly, like certain other major ministries in the Synod,
KFUO has experienced some financial pains in recent years, at
least on the AM side. The operative word here, however, is not
“pains” but “ministry.” KFUO AM is a noncommercial, pure-min-
istry endeavor, and ministries don’t come free. Although it’s true
that AM has had some year-end deficits (owing in large measure to
outside factors and LCMS accounting-policy changes beyond its
control), it’s also true that KFUO is taking the steps necessary to
get its overall bottom line back in the black.

To that end, a select four-member team of radio experts was as-
sembled by the BCS to make recommendations on (1) balancing
the KFUO budget by (among other adjustments) bringing its cost-
and-revenue ratios into line with National Association of Broad-
casting guidelines, and (2) finding ways to generate and place new,
high-quality AM programming in other markets across America, 4
la the widely syndicated “Issues, Etc.”

Despite the call for a balanced budget, in fairness to KFUO
management, let it be said that senior staff at KFUO have striven
mightily in recent years—and succeeded—at keeping expenses
under budget. It’s just that sharply rising overhead and falling rev-
enues have outstripped the savings realized in the expense column.

Let it also be said that KFUO has laid the groundwork for out-
standing financial growth in the form of its “Arts Council” and other
boards dedicated to raising funds for Classic99 and, more recently,
AM 850. These boards have grown to 50 members from St. Louis
and across the United States. Their efforts have attracted the interest
and support of St. Louis-based Fortune 500 companies that know the
value of the Classic99 audience to their businesses. This past March,
companies underwriting a KFUO “gala” included A.G. Edwards,
Brown Shoe, Centene, Worldwide Technology, Edward Jones, Emer-
son Electric, Peabody Energy, and Enterprise Rent-a-Car.

KFUO FM can take care of itself. It’s a well-run commercial
Station that makes a profit. In fact, it helps underwrite the costs of
the noncommercial AM side. Owing to AM’s narrower mission
and smaller audience and pool of supporters, it’s not as easy to
raise money for AM as it is for its sister station. Even so, today, in
close partnership with the LCMS Foundation, KFUO and the BCS
are working hard to broaden and deepen the revenue streams feed-
ing the clear, unmistakably Lutheran, worldwide Gospel outreach
of AM 850.

KFUO—“Forward! Upward! Onward!”—is a crown jewel of
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. It is a growing global
ministry (our Internet-streaming numbers are going up every
month), both in terms of its FM music and its AM talk-radio fare,
the latter steeped in Confessional Lutheran programming. (If you

2007 Convention Workbook