Why Old-Fashioned Adventist Radio Broadcasting Is Still Relevant in Italy

The radio ministry in the Italian Union of Seventh-day Adventist Christian Churches has a long tradition, thanks to Adventist World Radio (AWR).

The first FM radio station in Europe run full time by the Adventist Church opened in Florence on December 1, 1979. And it was just the beginning, because in the following years the radio network developed and now covers a significant number of Italian cities, on FM frequencies but also on digital audio broadcasting (DAB), satellite, and through internet streaming.

Interestingly, the Bible course — which plays an important role in the radio ministry — is operated by Silvia Vadi, a pastor who is the daughter of one of the first people who joined the Adventist Church as a direct result of the radio ministry in Florence. And one of the regular speakers for the studio in Florence, Claudio Coppini, used to be a listener before joining the Adventist Church a few years ago.

More recently, the ongoing relevance of old-fashioned radio broadcasting has surprised me. The glorious short-wave programs, so important at the time of the Cold War, can play a significant, though more limited, role even today.

In Italy, the radio ministry on short wave is still active with a one-hour program on Sunday morning at 11:00 (local time) on 9610 kHz. 

Every week we receive, on average, 15 emails with reception reports and some comments on the content of the program. We have noticed that our listeners are very much interested in the first part of the program (on stations and the world of radio broadcasting), but many of them keep on listening till the end of the hour (the second part of the program is usually more religion oriented).

Just to give you a glimpse into the content of our programs on short-wave radio, on April 21 we interviewed Elettra Marconi, a 93-year-old woman who is Guglielmo Marconi’s daughter. We talked with her about her memories of her father (she was only seven years old when her father, the inventor of radio, died). After that, we talked with an Adventist pastor about a topic taken from the national newspapers, the Christian duty to take care of the environment, and how to cope with suffering (we introduced a special Bible course on this topic). The program ended with a Christian appeal to open our hearts to Jesus who knocks at the door of our hearts.

Like most Western countries, Italy is increasingly a secularized country, where religion is regarded as an important heritage of the past, but with very little relevance to present needs and hopes of the Italian people. The Facebook page of the Sunday program, however, has reached 3,100 followers, who are very active with a lot of videos and posts about our program, plus technical details about radio broadcasting. Listeners are satisfied with the Sunday program, and some of them have even said they will choose the Adventist Church for the 8×1000, a special donation that Italians can give when they pay their taxes.

This program is possible thanks to the commitment of AWR to offer an international service on short wave, but also thanks to the commitment of non-Adventist people who work with us with no financial reward only because they are fans of the radio.

There is no competition between different types of broadcasting; they are all means in the hands of God to reach the hearts of people where they live, in their houses, cars, through their hobbies and their different interests. May God help us in our task, to bring peace in a world that longs for hope and meaning.

The original version of this commentary was posted on the Inter-European Division news site.