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Forty years ago, Ardmore, Tennessee's Christian radio station would have been typical. Purchased by a neighborhood pastor, it aired church services during blocks of time the congregation could afford and Southern gospel music the rest of the week. As Christian Radio author Bob Lochte recalls, the few advertisements it garnered were from area businesses like the local Goodyear Tires outlet.

Locally owned and operated, such stations provided a modest service to their communities. But rarely, if ever, did they draw in large numbers of people or make a significant profit. Most struggled simply to remain on-air.

There were exceptions, of course. Some of the stalwarts of Christian broadcasting enjoyed tremendous success throughout the years. Aimee Semple McPherson's Los Angeles station rode the colorful evangelist's popularity in the early 1920s. Charles Fuller's Old-Fashioned Revival Hour began broadcasting in 1937 and was syndicated to as many as 650 radio stations before the Bible teacher's death in 1968. And Moody Radio in Chicago has broadcast professionally produced gospel programming since its founding in 1926 right up to the present day.

These trailblazers helped make radio an established part of evangelicals' media outreach, complementing books, magazines, tracts, and, eventually, TV and internet. But they were unusual. Before the 1970s and 1980s, most listeners to Christian radio tuned in to stations and programming of widely varying quality and reach.

Those days are long gone. Today, popular Christian programs, such as Focus on the Family and Insight for Living, draw audiences of up to 1.5 million every show. The Barna Group estimates that 46 percent of Americans tune in to Christian broadcasting. While other radio formats have been in decline, reports Lochte, the Christian radio audience has grown 38 percent since 1998.

Christian broadcasting has become professional, national, and, yes, even profitable. And the engine driving this transformation—indeed, the company more responsible for it than any other—is Salem Communications.

Based in beachside Camarillo, California, Salem owns many of the frequencies that feature programs like Focus and Insight. It operates 97 stations, 61 of them in the country's top-25 markets.

By comparison, other significant Christian chains barely touch the country's largest cities, where half of all Americans live. Contemporary music's K-LOVE owns more total stations than Salem, but only 10 in major markets. Moody Broadcasting operates 31 frequencies, but just 3 in the big cities of Chicago and Cleveland. And Bott Radio,with 38 stations, holds none in major markets.

With far and away the largest audience of any Christian radio network, Salem's industry competitors aren't Christian broadcasters at all—they're the giants of secular radio, companies like Clear Channel Communications and CBS Radio.

Salem also syndicates its own shows, which air on more than 2,000 stations around the country. Popular Salem hosts include Bill Bennett, the elder President Bush's drug czar and author of The Book of Virtues; Janet Parshall, a former housewife turned political commentator; and Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Attuned to new media realities, Salem has led Christian radio beyond the airwaves as well. Beginning in 1999, the company purchased websites like OnePlace.com, Crosswalk.com, now among the most-visited Christian destinations on the internet, and Townhall.com, a clearinghouse for conservative news and opinion. It publishes seven magazines, including CCM Magazine and Youthworker Journal, and in 2006 it bought on-demand publisher Xulon Press.

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February 2007, Vol. 51, No. 2