Over a quarter of all radio stations in Indiana are religiously affiliated, according to a new report from Pew Research Center.
These 108 religious stations make up 27 percent of the stations in the state. That’s just over the average for the country; exactly one quarter of all stations in the U.S. are religious.
Sam Bestvater, a senior data scientist with Pew Research, said that 98 percent of Americans live within range of a religious station.
“Pretty much anybody who travels around the country and makes a habit of flipping through the radio dial in different places has probably had the experience of scrolling past a whole bunch of religious radio stations,” he said. “Pretty much anywhere you are, you can tune into one.”
The report also looked at the content on these stations. About 30 percent of all religious stations dedicate less than 30 minutes a day to politics and current events. Conversely, 29 percent devote more than 2.5 hours a day.
“Across all of that, there was about an even split between talk and music, but individual stations really tend to focus on one format or the other,” Bestvater said.
Thirty-seven percent of stations devote most of their time to music, while 35 percent focus on talk-show programming.
After analyzing about 440,000 hours of broadcasts for the reports, Bestvater said that religious radio stations often vary from one another on content and are not monolithic.
