Tune Your Dial - Christian Broadcasting Association

23 Mar 2009

Phil Guyan, manager and producer of the Christian Broadcasting Association (CBA) talks about CBA’s upcoming Easter programme and the mission to communicate the essentials of the Christian faith to those who have never understood.

How did you get involved with CBA?

CBA had gone into liquidation, and I was working as the youth pastor at the church where the original founder happened to go. When CBA went under he offered me the job of doing a feasibility study to see whether or not it might be worth setting up again. I spent several weeks meeting with different people and phoning previous supporters to see if there was a market for the programmes and support for the mission. After about six or seven weeks we felt that there was a market and probably enough support to at least get it going again with one person working part time, which turned out to be me.

What programmes does CBA offer?

We do a daily programme called ‘Scrubcutters’, usually five a week, and have now done 3000 in the last 12 years. Each piece is heard by over 180,000 people at primetime on NewstalkZB and is 90 seconds long.

We have two weekly programmes—one is called ‘Real Life with John Cowan’. That’s been going for five years and has been the top-rating show for its time slot that whole time. The next show is only about two weeks old. It’s a three-hour show called ‘Sunday, Sunday with Pat and Petra’ from 9 pm-midnight.

We also have Christmas and Easter programmes [when] we take over all of NewstalkZB and also broadcast on Radio Sport for the entire day. We have about 250,000 listeners at Christmas and about 300,000 listeners at Easter. Finally, we do radio shorts for all of the radio stations in New Zealand for Waitangi Day, St Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Anzac Day.

Who is your target market? How do you cater for them?

One of the questions NewstalkZB asks on its survey is: do you regard religion or spirituality as a primary interest in your life? Between 86 and 91 per cent of people responding said no. The mission of CBA is to communicate the essentials of the Christian faith to those who have never understood. So, if more than eight out of 10 people that listen to NewsTalk are not Christians, then that’s why we’re there.

Our programmes entertain, they inform, they challenge; some of them are quite emotive. Our first priority is to create good radio. If it’s not good radio, then we don’t get the listeners. The second priority is to communicate faith. We have to relate with the audience, and then we can communicate a faith that’s real and compelling. Easter and Christmas are very overt in terms of the Christian content. ‘Real Life’ is sometimes overt and sometimes not at all.

How do you put faith across in a compelling way?

It has to be intelligent; we can't assume the audience knows what we’re talking about. We have to presume a complete lack of knowledge of the Bible. We can’t say, ‘Well, it says in the Bible …’ that’s about as useful as telling somebody what it says in the Koran or the Book of Mormon.

I think personal testimony is also a strong way of doing it. Another thing you can do, is say, ‘God is like this or God is like that’. Then people can come on board with that discussion without even questioning whether or not God is real in the first place. Another thing is to keep it positive and non-confrontational. It’s more important to win the heart of the listener than it is to win an argument. They have to like you before they’ll listen to you.

Can you tell us a bit about this year’s Easter programme?

Twelve hours is divided up into four three-hour shows. 6 am-9 am will be hosted by Ian Grant, 9 am-12 pm will be hosted by John Cowan, 12 pm-3 pm will be hosted by Petra Bagust and 3 pm-6 pm will be hosted by Tim Sisarich and John Cooney.

We’ll have some fun elements. We're going to go out and approach young people and say, ‘I’m going to give you two quotes, one is from Jesus and one is not. If you can pick the one that is from Jesus, we will give you an Easter Egg.’ That way, whether they get it right or wrong doesn’t matter; you’re getting the teachings of Jesus out there in a fun way. We’re just trying to make people think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, Easter’s got something to do with Jesus.’

In the past, we have had world-renowned Christian thinkers be part of the show. People will phone up and say, ‘Look, that stuff is such a load of rot,’ and then Lee Strobel or Philip Yancey or Tony Campolo will answer their questions and talk with them. These guys are great because, by the time they finish the conversation, they’re best mates with the caller. They don’t talk in a way that assumes ‘you’re wrong, I’m right’.

The next thing that we did a little bit of last year but we’ll do more of this year is: I went to people who I thought could communicate the faith and would say, ‘Light a match and then tell us the essence of the Gospel story by the time the match burns out.’ So they have about 25 seconds to give it to me in a nutshell. It’s quirky, interesting and fun, so that, even if you aren’t a Christian, you’re tuned in.

What is your goal for this year’s Easter programme?

I tend to walk away from the end of a programme asking: did we represent the heart of God? Sometimes I come away thinking, ‘Yeah, we really did. That was a fun, loving, interesting, entertaining, stimulating programme.’ Or sometimes it’s because people have phoned up who were on board with what we were talking about; they were engaging, whether they agreed with us or not. It is a sense of the presence of God in the programming, and that there’s a bit of fun. Sometimes I’ve left the show thinking: that was a bit flat, or a bit confrontational or heavy. It’s about striking the right balance, achieving the highs and lows, moments of laughter and moments of emotion.

Where do you see CBA headed in the next 10 years?

More shows on more stations. We once said that our aim was to have 10 shows on the Newstalk networks, and we’ve done that now if you include all the special event shows. A few more weekly programmes would be good. We do have a sports programme in the wings, but that might take a little while to come alive.

If you look at our current presenters, a lot of them are starting to be the top end of the demographic. We need bring in more younger talent, develop younger presenters. I’d like to get onto some of the other networks as well. We’re always working on new stuff and trying to push new things, but it’s a slow process that can sometimes take several years.

Because we are sowing the seed, we’re not really in the harvesting business. We don’t assume that we're going to have lots of people at the end of the programme saying, ‘Yes, I’m going to give my life to Jesus now.’ We wouldn’t even use that kind of terminology.

It’s really important that we pray and that other Christians are picking up where we have left off. The harvesting and discipleship is in God’s hands, so all we can do really is pray that we can be effective in our bit of the process.

Interviewed by Cara Wood (from War Cry magazine)