Far East Broadcasting Co., a non-profit, non-denominational missionary organization that broadcasts the gospel of Jesus Christ to many parts of Asia, will decommission its radio station on Saipan by the end of the year, after 27 years of broadcasting on island.<\/p>\n
Bob Springer, FEBC general manager, attributed their decision to government deregulation and advances in communications technology that he said have significantly reduced the demand for shortwave broadcasting.<\/p>\n
Shortwave broadcasting is a long distance broadcasting mechanism that allows a radio station to broadcast up to 4,000 miles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last two and a half years, FEBC has studied the trends in technology in the audience listening habits and the conclusion of this exhaustive study has been we should cease broadcast from Saipan while continuing shortwave broadcast from our facilities in the Philippines,\u201d Springer said.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1945, FEBC began with a vision of starting a radio station in China and constructing programming studios in Shanghai. But with the Nationalist government\u2019s concern about the Communist takeover, FEBC wasn\u2019t given a license to operate a station there.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was sought in the Philippines, have to get property, get a license to broadcast from the Philippines into China,\u201d said Springer. \u201cThe first station went on the air just three months before China fell to the Communists and it\u2019s been broadcasting to China ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the ministry\u2019s rapid growth, FEBC started broadcasting from Okinawa to China in 1957 and Korea in1971.<\/p>\n
In 1975, FEBC initially came to Saipan \u201cto explore the possibilities of building a station here.\u201d In 1978, FEBC created KSAI to serve the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we were operating KSAI in those early years, negotiations went on for land to build a shortwave station and in 1981, a lease was signed in the Marpi area to build the station where we\u2019re located,\u201d said Springer, adding that FEBC officially went on air in 1984 with four transmitters broadcasting to Russia, China, and Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n
At the height of its broadcasting efforts, FEBC broadcasted to about 15 different countries in 24 different languages and dialects, including that of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and the Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Springer disclosed that they receive tens of thousands of letters every month from people responding to the gospel they broadcast.<\/p>\n
Having lived on Saipan \u201clonger than anywhere else that I\u2019ve ever lived,\u201d Springer said he feels sorry to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we\u2019ve enjoyed the 27 years that we\u2019ve been able to operate here on Saipan, the government and the commercial side of things here on Saipan has been very good to us and we\u2019ve appreciated that\u2026 But we can see the time and we know that that\u2019s the thing we need to do,\u201d added Springer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Far East Broadcasting Co., a non-profit, non-denominational missionary organization that broadcasts the gospel of Jesus Christ to many parts of Asia, will decommission its radio station on Saipan by the end of the year, after 27 years of broadcasting on island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154520\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}