By JJ Bowman
News Editor
Sometimes it’s necessary to run away from the mainstream opinion and establish a counter culture. For instance, Gandhi wasn’t about to work with British imperialists to improve the situation of his fellow citizens of India. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had no other option but to organize a counter-culture movement in hopes of securing equal rights. And of course, Jesus started the greatest counter-culture movement of all time about 2000 years ago.
Other times, however, when a group isolates itself from the mainstream it eliminates its ability to reach out to other people and change their opinions.
Take, for instance, the case of Fox News. After recognizing a long-standing liberal bias in the news, Fox established a network with a conservative agenda under the moniker “fair and balanced.”
Although Fox News has had a meteoric rise into the number one position among cable news networks (although that may change in a week or so if war breaks out and CNN repeats its performance from the 1991 Gulf War), Fox has done nothing to change the way mainstream media present their stories. Now networks with liberal slants still have the benefit of being mainstream while Fox News is branded as having an agenda.
On our campus, we have an even more blatant example of when going against the mainstream is an unproductive idea.
The brand-new Pepperdine radio station, KWVS 101.5, broadcasts waves all over the Pepperdine area with an all-Christian, all-the-time format. On the face, perhaps one might think it admirable that the radio station brings Pepperdine back to its Christian roots.
But the majority of people would not tune into an exclusively Christian station. We are a school between the secular and the religious. On one side Pepperdine is seen as the black sheep of the Church of Christ schools and on the other the university has the stigma of being full of ignorant, Bible-thumping conservatives.
Thus, a radio station with an exclusively Christian or exclusively secular agenda would not fit on this campus. In appealing to the (albeit sizeable) minority, KWVS undermines what should be the goal of any passionate Christian – to spread the Good News.
Take, for instance, the case of a fictional student named Bob. Bob has a wide-range of musical tastes, from Afro Man to Zeppelin, and he has some sense for what it means to be a Christian, yet he has no patience for someone telling him how to lead his life. After all, he grew up in the 1990s when having negative views of any lifestyle was considered boorish and outdated.
Under the current radio format, Bob is a lost sheep, but imagine if KWVS got to him a different way. Imagine after stopping his dial surfing on 101.5 to hear the latest Sum 41, two student DJs spoke a little about how they view the band and then introduced a song by the popular Christian band, Switchfoot.
Now chances are Bob won’t have a Damascus-like conversion while driving in his car and jamming to the radio, but at least there will be a chance that he will listen to a band with a Christian message.
If the radio station catered to religiously unmotivated students like Bob while at the same time displaying a steadfast conviction to Christianity, then more students would listen. And more students would get the message.
Thus, I exhort our friends at KWVS: Be different, go mainstream.
—Daring to be mainstream?E-mail JJ Bowman at jjbowman@pepperdine.edu.
March 13, 2003