Jesus: Always Evergreen

One of the many, many beautiful things about Christian radio is the everlasting message that Jesus brings to us and our hearts. The artists and songs may change, but like Jesus, the message remains the same - past, present, and future!

This thought brings to mind the advantage we have as a broadcast and media community. We don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to creating new content. All we need to do is lean in on the Message Jesus gives us and share it, share it, and share it again.

This type of content is widely known as evergreen content - meaning it never expires; it never gets old, and it is always salient to the one listening, no matter when that is.

When it comes to evergreen content, podcasting is a perfect vehicle. Think about it. How many times have you listened to a podcast only to find out it’s a few years old? Or, perhaps you finally tune in to a podcast that everyone is talking about, only to find out there are multiple seasons (years) worth of episodes to listen to.

I’m going to be talking about this a lot - the idea of Christian radio working towards a better podcast strategy this year, and (spoiler alert) this is where that evergreen content will do very well.

Let me digress.

This is what I think when it comes to the Christian media maker and digital audio: The internet is a vacuum, sucking in everything that goes into it - including so much porn, violence, hate, and isolationist ideologies that are literally tearing relationships, marriages, and the very fabric of our society apart in front of our very eyes. So why not fight fire with fire, see their darkness, and raise them our light in what is going onto the Internet? There are approximately 1,600 Christian radio organizations in the United States. If each organization put out three podcast episodes a week, that would be nearly 250,000 podcast episodes in one year. If each episode had 100 downloads, that is nearly 25 million ears being filled with Hope, Light, and the Promise of

Salvation. That’s 25 million more opportunities to fight the enemy and win!

If you are podcasting, keep it up!

If you are not podcasting, now is the time to start. Souls are on the line, and we have a powerful medium to fight the good fight.

Matt Kellogg is VP of Business Development at Media Creek, which offers digital audio solutions for all broadcasters.

matt@empirestreaming.com