Radio has changed since the days when Fulton Sheen (on the left, in the 1930’s) began broadcasting.

In the mid-1980s, I worked for CBS News Radio, as a writer and editor, rubbing elbows with legends like Charles Osgood and Douglas Edwards. It was good, old-fashioned radio news, complete with screaming editors, frenzied anchors, and reel-to-reel tape machines that invariably broke. Those were the days.

But three times in the last few weeks, I’ve found myself a guest on a very different kind of radio, satellite radio, being interviewed for some programs on The Catholic Channel.

Whatzat?

Helpfully, the folks at the Catholic News Service have just posted an interesting profile of the channel:

Co-produced by Sirius and the Archdiocese of New York, the channel airs nationally seven days a week, 24 hours a day, featuring talk shows with listener call-ins, football and basketball games from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and live daily Mass from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.

Under the arrangement, the archdiocese provides all of the programming, which is then purchased by Sirius for its commercial-free, subscription network. To receive the programming, listeners must purchase a special radio and pay a monthly fee, with rates beginning around $13.

There is no archdiocesan expenditure involved, said Joseph Zwilling, the archdiocesan director of communications, who also is general manager of the Catholic Channel.

Zwilling, who put together the programming lineup and remains actively involved in the channel’s operation, said the goal in creating it was “to produce Catholic radio that reached out to people who ordinarily would never listen to Catholic radio.”

“We wanted to use all of the modern popular radio techniques and formats and incorporate that with the Catholic point of view,” Zwilling told Catholic New York, the archdiocesan newspaper. “We wanted to be fun, funny, topical and contemporary.”

He said his only requirement was that “we must be unapologetically and totally Catholic.”

“But at the same time,” he said, “I would be very happy if somebody turned on the channel and listened because they liked what they heard — and didn’t realize for the first five, 10 or 15 minutes that this was a Catholic channel.”

Seems to me the Catholic Channel is offering a wonderful alternative: in a world that’s been Limbaughed and Sterned and Hannityed into a place of disagreement, argument and spite, here is something that speaks to the better angels of our nature. Here is something that dares to talk seriously about things like prayer, vocations, spirituality and faith. In other words, here is a place for the rest of us.

Not long ago, one of the channel’s hosts, Fr. Dave Dwyer, remarked that one of his listeners said: “I subscribed to Sirius for Howard Stern, but now I’m listening to you.”

I can’t think of a better testimony than that.