The New York metropolitan area now has access to an AM Catholic radio station. It’s called Relevant Radio, and you can tune to WNSW 1430AM, 24 hours a day.
“We call it Relevant Radio because we think all the news of the day is relevant to the message of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is relevant to every person,” says Father Rocky Hoffman, a priest of the Opus Dei prelature who serves as executive director of Relevant Radio.
Father Rocky describes the station’s programming as all-talk and interactive. Listeners can email or call the show and become part of the conversation. Or they can just eavesdrop and listen to the talk.
“We talk about the human experience,” says Father Rocky. “We talk about love and life, hope and despair, fear and courage.
“I’ve never found anything as effective as the radio because the listeners are in control. They can tune in or tune out as they wish. A good show is when someone can identify with what is being said. They’ll come back and listen again.
“We like to say that we’re on the air, online (relevantradio.com) and on demand (packaged podcasts).”
Father Rocky knows that the message is getting out. He says that the station has received more than 200,000 individual prayer requests this year. And he has seen people wait in line for an hour just to say hello to him because they heard him on the radio and wanted to thank him for something that was on the air.
“We’ve heard stories about people coming back to church and we want to hold their hands and walk with them,” he says.
Right now, Relevant Radio has the ability to reach 48 million listeners in 35 states, but it is on a mission to spread the news via Internet, billboards and TV.
“We have to reach the masses,” he says, explaining that Jesus spoke one-to-one, in small groups and also to large groups such as the Sermon on the Mount and when he preached from a boat to those on the seashore.
Father Rocky is especially pleased to be on the air in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, through its new station in Newark, N.J. It was a project encouraged by the Archdiocese of Newark, the Diocese of Brooklyn and the DeSales Media Group, the parent company of The Tablet and NET-TV.
He realizes that right now the Church talks to most people for one hour a week at Sunday Mass. He’s confident that Catholic media can add five to six hours to that total as part of the New Evangelization.
If you’re wondering where he got the name “Rocky,” his mother always wanted a boy named Peter (Rock in Latin), but Dad prevailed and the son was named Francis John. Mom, being of strong will, hung the nickname “Rocky” and always called him by that name.
“It wasn’t until the first grade when Sister Una called the roll that I discovered my name was Francis,” he says.
