Christian radio network in New York state and Pennsylvania
The Family Life Network is a Christian radio network simulcasting via FM stations across Western and Central New York, as well as northern Pennsylvania from flagship station WCIK. It is owned and operated by the larger Family Life Ministries of Bath, New York. Founded in 1957, FLM is an accredited member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). Family Life is a listener-supported outreach with about 95% of its operating revenue coming directly from listeners, participants, and supporting churches.[1]
The Family Life Network should not be confused with the unrelated Family Life Communications (also known as Family Life Radio), a chain of similar radio stations in Michigan and the southwest.
History
For most of its first 30 years of existence, Family Life Ministries operated a single FM radio station, Bath's WCIK. With the release of Docket 80-90 and the massive expansion of rural and suburban FM radio signals in the late 1980s, Family Life rapidly expanded into a network, beginning with WCID in Friendship, New York (now WCOV).[2]
Family Life maintains an active presence in buying and selling stations and translators in its coverage area, a practice that takes advantage of the ministry's status as a religious broadcaster and its exemption from caps on the number of stations it can own in one broadcast area. It has largely avoided AM radio; when presented with a right of first refusal to buy an AM station in Syracuse,[3] it declined, and it quickly spun off two others in Elmira and Salamanca two months after acquiring them in the wake of Waypoint Media's dissolution.[4]
All of Family Life's stations begin with call signs WCI, WCO, WCG or WCD. According to the company's station list, these abbreviations stand for Where Christ Is, Where Christ Offers, Where Christ Grants and With Christ Discover. Flagship WCIK, for example, represents "Where Christ Is King."
