When lockdown hit us in the UK, it caused no end of misery for businesses as they shut up shop in double quick time. However it wasn’t just businesses that were affected. Churches and other places of worship were locked up and members refused access to, what is for many, a vital part of their lives.
In addition to a place to celebrate a weekly service, many churches provide a lot of social care and support to their members and others and much of this was stopped.
As members of the Apex Church in Cowes, the Rosetta Radio team decided to set up a temporary radio station to help keep the congregation in touch. The team would have been busy providing several special event radio stations but these were obviously cancelled so they were at a loose end. Over a cup of tea and a virtual Zoom meeting, Apex Radio was born!
The radio station was setup in Mike and Sue’s dining room and was quickly broadcasting at apexradio.org as well as on smart speakers thanks to mytuner-radio.com. The station was online for over 90 days during which time they broadcast 91 quizzes, 90 psalms, 81 hymn histories, 79 children’s story readings, 92 bible readings and 24 thoughts for the day. This is in addition to the usual collection of music, news and weather reports that you would expect from a radio station.
Each week the church created a Sunday “Webby Church” service with worship songs, prayers and a sermon and we broadcast this on a Sunday morning. Every evening we broadcast a recorded sermon (92 of them!) from the previous few years at the church and all week we interviewed people from the church and around the world, bringing their thoughts and encouragement during the difficult times of lockdown.
Whilst this service was a faith based station it is clear to see that there are many ways that a temporary online radio station can be of use to your organisation, business or event. Whether it is to encourage others to take part or to keep your membership informed as this one was, a temporary station is quick to set up and easy to provide whatever output is needed from interviews to information to advertising.
If you would like to find out more about providing a radio station for your organisation or event then please get in touch for a chat.