Journey FM nominated for Marconi Award as Religious Station of the Year

The Liberty University-owned radio station WRVL/The Journey FM has been named a finalist in the 2019 National Association of Broadcasters Marconi Radio Awards. The Journey is one of five stations nominated in the Religious Station of the Year format.

The Marconi Award is a premier radio award honoring stations in multiple formats, for excellence in broadcasting and service to their communities. The winners will be announced Sept. 26 during the 2019 Radio Show in Dallas, Texas.

Journey General Manager Mike Weston said, “The nomination is an extraordinary honor because The Journey is such a young radio station and it is the first time we’ve ever submitted an entry. To us, as a Journey team, this means that God is choosing to honor our efforts by making this type of recognition possible; He doesn’t have to. We are so grateful.”

The station submitted a 90-second audio piece and a 200-word essay that summarizes the station’s programming, community engagement, and ratings and revenue growth. If The Journey wins, a 60-second video of the station will be shown at the awards show.

Other stations nominated for Religious Station of the Year are: KKFS in Sacramento, Calif., KKJM in St. Cloud, Minn., KNWI in West Des Moines, Iowa, and KPWJ in College Station, Texas.

The Marconi Award was established by the NAB in 1989 and is named after Nobel Prize winner and “Father of Wireless Telegraphy” Guglielmo Marconi. The nominees and award winners are chosen by the NAB Marconi Radio Awards Selection Academy, which is made up of general managers, program directors, regional executives, owners, programming consultants, and former radio executives from across the country.

Weston also thanks The Journey’s listeners and donors for their part in this honor.

“We are so grateful to them for making this ministry possible every day,” he said. “We have the privilege of getting to see so many emails, texts, and social media comments on a daily basis telling us how much the songs we play and the things we say mean to them. A typical comment is ‘You played the right song (or said a certain something) at just the right moment, like it was a personal message designed just for me.’ We’re just not that good — it’s just a God-wink moment we cannot engineer.”

WRVL is the flagship station for the Journey Radio Network, formerly the Victory Radio Network, founded in 1983 by Liberty’s founder, the late Dr. Jerry Falwell. The radio station was part of his vision to “reach every available person at every available time using every available means.”

The Journey broadcasts throughout Virginia and North Carolina. Listen live at myjourneyfm.com.