Cross Rhythms station has announced their decision to cease broadcasting on Sky Digital

CROSS RHYTHMS has made a surprise announcement of their intention to cease broadcasting the Cross Rhythms radio station on Sky Digital 876. The decision comes five months after the launch of their second station, Cross Rhythms City Radio, which is broadcasting across Stoke-on-Trent on 101.8FM.

Said Chris Cole, Cross Rhythms CEO, "Ever since we launched City Radio we recognised that strategically God was putting a real emphasis on this opportunity he had given us to broadcast a contemporary Christian radio station that was genuinely able to interact with local community and local church. Through City Radio we have felt God widen our understanding of the use of Christian media incredibly in this time and we have seen much confirmation that a Christian station can truly be a bridge between the Church and wider community. These are early days but we believe God is leading us into a new template for the partnership between Church and media. Since City Radio came online our satellite broadcasts have suffered as we have not had the time, manpower and finance to run both stations as well as we would wish. It has not been an easy decision to terminate our satellite broadcasts and to be honest we cannot say we have a strong, clear word from God that we should. However, having also moved into a new building in July, the pressure on us financially over the last two years and what we recognise we need to grow into in the next two years, has led us to see that the emphasis for us on satellite has come to the end of a season. In some ways it is a big step of faith to let go a part of our ministry that had been well established and walk into the unknown, particularly as it is not certain that our City Radio licence will continue past March 1st 2003. However, we sense God is leading us this way and we feel we need to take these steps with him."

Chris continued, "In addition to our FM station, our website broadcasts continue to strengthen, as increasingly we are finding a global audience for our particular format of contemporary programmes. Indeed our website regular receives more than a million hits per month. Interestingly statistics published in The Times also show that three years ago only two per cent of all radio listeners listened via the Internet. Today that figure is at 10 per cent. Certainly our website is showing real growth, with our live radio chatroom, webcam and recent additions of weekly Bible Studies, Prayer Boards and a Job Search facility all proving popular with visitors. We are sorry if the termination of our satellite station is a big disappointment to some of our supporters but we hope they will continue to listen to us on the internet in the future. We have to say that despite our decision to come off satellite other parts of Cross Rhythms are flourishing. Our move into the old BBC Radio Stoke building has injected a real sense of future and expansion, although our pathway seems to be going around a few corners at the moment!"

The Cross Rhythms radio station on satellite, which launched in July 1998, will end early or late September 2002.