Just How Many Americans Can Listen to Religious Radio?

Published: March 30, 2026

By Michaela Gordoni

A new research study shows the reach of religious radio.

Approximately 25% of all radio stations in the US are religious-based. Nearly 98% of adults live within range of at least one religious radio station, NRB reported.

Younger listeners are more likely to use podcasts or streaming platforms than the radio.

Pew research says religious radio stations’ combined broadcast range covers most of the US landmass. However, less than half (45%) of U.S. adults say they listen to religious radio.

“I think anyone who travels around the country and makes a habit of flipping through the radio dial in different places has probably noticed that you can tune into a religious station pretty much anywhere you are,” said Samuel Bestvater, a senior data scientist on the Data Labs team at Pew Research Center and one of the researchers behind this study. “For a few years, we’ve had on our agenda that this is kind of an understudied part of the media landscape that we would love to research.”

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Of the religious stations, 63% self-identify as Christian, 10% identify as protestant and 8% Catholic. Nearly 20% are not able to be categorized.

Over three-quarters of the stations have an evangelistic mission. About 37% are nearly all music, 28% are a mix of talk and music and 35% are almost all talk.

Some 37% of Americans who listen to religious radio say it is extremely or very important to their religious or spiritual lives while, 35% say it is somewhat important. And 29% say it is either not too or not at all important.

Though political commentary isn’t the most dominant category of religious stations, it is a major focus for some stations.

“News and politics is a great example of a topic where the programming that listeners choose to listen to has a pretty big impact on what it is that they hear. It’s only 14% who said, ‘This is the major reason that I’m tuning in,’” said Bestvater. “We also asked people just how much news and politics they hear while they’re listening at all, and most listeners say they don’t hear that much.”

“There was really this pretty clear differentiation between how news and politics are approached on the stations that spend a lot of time talking about politics, and the ones that don’t,” he continued. “There are some stations, about 30%, where that’s kind of a major focus and accounts for several hours of programming every day.”

While religious radio remains widely accessible, stations may want to branch into streaming and podcasts to keep up with younger audiences.

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