Christian “superstation” marks 15 years on the air
BARRIE, ON—Every week, Christian radio executive Scott Jackson hears from fellow believers with a dream to start their own radio station. And almost invariably, he ends up trying to bring them back to reality.
“Ninety-five per cent of them have no radio experience. I tell them, ‘Just because you own a pair of skates doesn’t mean you can play in the NHL,’” he says. “But a few of them do it anyway. Then they wonder why their stations are not doing well financially.”
Jackson is the founder and station manager of LIFE 100.3-FM in Barrie. Calling itself “Ontario’s Christian Superstation,” 2014 marks its 15th year on the air. With repeater stations in Owen Sound, Peterborough and Huntsville, its format of Christian music and spoken-word programming is accessible to more than two million people.
Jackson makes no apology that he runs LIFE 100.3 like a business. “The ministry happens when a song or a talk show touches somebody’s life and encourages them. Everything we do here is to make that happen,” he says. “But you need money to do ministry.”
Yet Jackson himself once dreamed of launching a Christian radio station. That happened in 1997, after he returned to Ontario from WAY-FM in Nashville, the leading Christian station in the United States. LIFE 100.3 began broadcasting in August 1999.
Jackson says its success is more than he expected back then. “I knew that Christians would love it,” he says. “What I didn’t count on was the repeater stations. God’s vision was bigger than mine. I said it’s going to be Simcoe County only—and now it’s all of central Ontario. I had no idea that would happen.”
The station currently employs 13 people full time and six part time.
Jackson finds it “crazy” that Canada’s three largest population centres—Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal—have no locally owned and operated Christian radio stations. Even LIFE 100.3 cannot be heard in Toronto.
Of the 50 or so stations across Canada, Jackson estimates that about half of them “are just little basement operations or church operations.”
“Shine-FM [in Alberta] does really well. They’ve got great power and a great quality station,” he says. “But most stations have very low power, and they’re having a tough go of it.”
Although Jackson would “definitely consider” any opportunity to grow LIFE 100.3 even more in the years ahead, that is not something he is actively pursuing.
“I want to focus,” he says, “on what I’ve got, not drop the ball, serve this area with a great radio station, and not spread our staff too thin.”
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