Premier Christian Radio is a British Christian radio station, part of Premier (a Christian communications organisation), owned by the charity Premier Christian Media Trust. Premier Christian Radio broadcasts Christian programming, including news, debate, teachings and Christian music across the United Kingdom.

History

Premier Christian Radio was founded in 1994, broadcasting exclusively on medium wave to a Greater London audience when it also began its telephone counselling service, ''Premie''r ''Lifeline''. It took the air at a launch party in

Battersea Park Battersea Park is a 200-acre (83-hectare) green space at Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth in London. It is situated on the south bank of the River Thames opposite Chelsea and was opened in 1858. The park occupies marshland recla ...

, London on 10 June 1995. A series of magazine titles then joined. The charity currently produces ''

Premier Christianity ''Premier Christianity'' is a monthly Evangelical Christian magazine published in the United Kingdom. The magazine was started in 1965 as a newsletter with name ''Buzz''. It was sponsored by the organization Music Gospel Outreach (MGO) and share ...

Premier Youth and Children's workPremier Woman Alive.
' In 2001, Premier Christian Radio received an official warning from the

Radio Authority Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitt ...

for broadcasting "items that were offensive to people of other, non-Christian beliefs". A "yellow card" warning was issued, recognising that Premier had acknowledged its errors and put in place significant new compliance measures to ensure such breaches would not be repeated. In the months of April to July 2014 Premier Christian Radio reached its biggest-ever audience in its near twenty years history.

RAJAR Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR) was established in 1992 to operate a single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom. RAJAR is jointly owned by the BBC and RadioCentre. RAJAR's predecessor was call ...

figures showed a weekly reach for the period of 240,700 people in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

and the South East of England, and also showed that each listener tuned in for an average of 10.1 hours each week. This boost followed on from a rebranding exercise in the beginning of 2014, and a new website which included listen-again features and breaking news. As of March 2021, reach and listening had fallen back to 121,000 people and 3.5 hours per week.

Availability

Medium wave AM

It operates on four frequencies on medium wave across six

transmitters In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to th ...

: * 1332 (London) * 1305 ( Stevenage, Bishops Stortford, Harlow and Hertford; Crawley, Guildford,

Reigate Reigate ( ) is a town in Surrey, England, around south of central London. The settlement is recorded in Domesday Book in 1086 as ''Cherchefelle'' and first appears with its modern name in the 1190s. The earliest archaeological evidence for huma ...

and Woking) * 1413 ( Maidenhead, Camberley, Staines, Harrow,

Watford Watford () is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, 15 miles northwest of Central London, on the River Colne. Initially a small market town, the Grand Junction Canal encouraged the construction of paper-making mills, print works, and ...

; and

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It ...

, Brentwood, Dartford,

Maidstone Maidstone is the largest town in Kent, England, of which it is the county town. Maidstone is historically important and lies 32 miles (51 km) east-south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town, linking it wi ...

Sevenoaks Sevenoaks is a town in Kent with a population of 29,506 situated south-east of London, England. Also classified as a civil parish, Sevenoaks is served by a commuter main line railway into London. Sevenoaks is from Charing Cross, the traditio ...

) * 1566 ( Guildford) It also broadcast on the

Digital One Digital One is a national commercial digital radio multiplex in the United Kingdom, owned by Arqiva. , the multiplex covered more than 90% of the population from 137 transmitters. Coverage was extended to Northern Ireland in July 2013. It cont ...

national DAB multiplex, nationally on

Freeview Freeview may refer to: * Freeview (Australia), the marketing name for the digital terrestrial television platform in Australia * Freeview (New Zealand), a digital satellite and digital terrestrial television platform in New Zealand *Freeview (UK), ...

(channel 725), via its website, and via its mobile app. In 2016 it moved its DAB transmission to the SDL national multiplex which is lower cost but has less complete national coverage.

Digital DAB, Freeview and internet

Premier Christian Radio was at first only available on medium wave in London. It later added broadcasts on the internet,

channel 725 (UK and Ireland), Sky Digital (channel 0123, terminated 14 December 2012),

Virgin Media Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ventu ...

(channel 968, terminated 6 May 2009) and London DAB - a national DAB broadcast was added later. In 2006, the media group launched Premier.tv, one of the first Christian

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded med ...

channels in the UK. Its 2007 application for a national DAB licence, as part of the

National Grid Wireless Arqiva () is a British telecommunications company which provides infrastructure, broadcast transmission and smart meter facilities in the United Kingdom. The company is headquartered at the former Independent Broadcasting Authority headquarters ...

consortium, was refused; Premier Radio said "almost 72,000 Premier listeners stepped up and made their voices heard in supporting the bid". In August 2009, Premier achieved its target of meeting the £650,000 yearly fee to broadcast on the national Digital One DAB multiplex and launched on the multiplex on 21 September 2009.

Premier Gospel

'
Premier Gospel
'' was launched as a DAB spin-off station in 2010, taking the London DAB slot vacated by the parent service's move to D1. Premier Gospel launched the Premier Gospel Awards in 2016.

Premier Praise

A second sister station, Premier Praise!, playing contemporary

Christian pop Contemporary Christian music, also known as CCM, Christian pop, and occasionally inspirational music is a genre of modern popular music, and an aspect of Christian media, which is lyrically focused on matters related to the Christian faith and s ...

and

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

, launched on 27 March 2016 as part of the

Sound Digital Sound Digital is a semi-national commercial digital radio multiplex in the United Kingdom, owned by Arqiva, Bauer Media Group and Wireless Group. The multiplex covers 73% of the population from a total of 45 transmitters. History Following ...

national DAB multiplex. It will be available on SDL alongside the core Premier service, which completes its migration over from Digital 1 to SDL in April.

Listenership

Premier Christian Radio's supporters come from many different Christian denominations, including those from the Anglican,

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compe ...

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

Evangelical Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual expe ...

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

and

Pentecostal Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement

churches. In 2004 ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' placed Premier Christian Radio at number one in a chart of the "most upmarket stations" based upon the percentage of its audience (81%) that is

ABC1 ABC TV, formerly known as ABC1, is an Australian national public television network. It is owned and operated by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is the flagship ABC Television network. The headquarters of the ABC TV channel an ...

. In the quarter ending June 2010 the station was receivable by 10,983,000 people; 143,000 listened, for an average of 12 hours each, 0.80% of all listening hours. As of September 2022, the station has a weekly audience of 71,000 listeners according to RAJAR.

Notable presenters

Cindy Kent The Settlers are an English folk music, folk-orientated music group, originally from the English West Midlands urban area, West Midlands, who formed in the mid-1960s. The band folded in the early 1980s, relaunched in 2018, and disbanded again i ...

, former singer with the 1960s folk group

The Settlers ''The Settlers'' (german: Die Siedler) is a city-building and real-time strategy video game series created by Volker Wertich. The original game was released on the Commodore Amiga in 1993, with subsequent games released primarily on MS-DOS a ...

. *

John Pantry John Pantry (born 10 October 1946) is a musician, singer, songwriter, audio engineer (at IBC Studios, for the Small Faces and on the first three Bee Gees L.P.s) and record producer from Harrow, Middlesex, England. He's been active since the la ...

, 1970s singer and music producer. * Muyiwa * Pam Rhodes * Noël Tredinnick, Principal Conductor of the All Souls Orchestra. *Justin Brierley, Presents Premier Christian Radio's flagship apologetics and theology debate programm
Unbelievable

References

External links

* * {{Authority control Radio stations in London Radio stations in Kent Radio stations in Essex Radio stations in Sussex Radio stations in Surrey Radio stations in Hertfordshire Christianity in London Christian radio stations in the United Kingdom Charities based in London