BROADCASTING PIONEER DIES

AUSTRALIAN CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING PIONEER DIES

Australian religious broadcasting pioneer Rev. Vernon Kenneth Turner, 89, died on Saturday, Nov. 18, following a lengthy illness, just two months after his wife, May Elizabeth, passed away. Turner was born in Adelaide in 1917, and he lived there until his family moved to Sydney in 1931.

At the age of seven he built his first microphone from a wooden Beecham’s Pills box and some mica and carbon granules. He later built much more sophisticated microphones. Before leaving Adelaide, he frequented the local radio stations after school. In 1937 he was accepted by Anglican Archbishop Howard Mowll for training for the ministry at Moore Theological College. After two Sydney parishes, he and his wife spent several years as missionaries in the outback of New South Wales.

In 1938 Turner began his first weekly radio broadcast called “Church News” which continued for many years. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 interrupted his studies that he resumed in 1946 at Emmanuel College at the University of Queensland, the training college for the Presbyterian Church, and he was licensed in 1951. By the late 1950s Turner and his staff were producing 800 weekly programs for 100 commercial stations across Australia. Among them were programs such as “Counsellor,” “Rev Gordon Powell,” “World Church News” and “From the Bible.”

In 1955 he called the first meeting of the Christian Television Association and was its first secretary. Having applied for an FM radio license for Sydney 23 years earlier, it was finally granted in 1978, and 2CBA-FM began broadcasting in March 1979, Australia’s first Christian FM station. Since then the station has operated 24 hours a day, reaching the entire Sydney metropolitan area. His daily program, “Morning Devotions,” aired for more than 20 years until his retirement in 1996.

Funeral services are planned for Friday November 24th in St. David’s Uniting Church, Haberfield.