What happens if you spend millions of dollars to tell everyone the world is going to end and it doesn’t? You end up in financial ruin, a hard fact that Family Radio is now learning according to a report. The Oakland-based evangelical network is now in serious financial trouble.
The Contra Costa Times reveals that the network, owned by Harold Camping, spent $5 million on billboards to tell the world that Judgement Day was coming on May 21, 2011. Matt Tuter, a former employee revealed to the paper that there were plans to get skywriting planes to get the message out, but he cancelled those, as he knew that the company was spending money as if Camping’s prediction was really goign to come true. Of course, it didn’t.
Documents acquired by the Contra Costa Times show that the company has had to shed its three biggest money-making radio stations and that its net assets fell to $29.2 million by 2011, even though donations from the previous five years totaled $85.2 million. By the end of that year, it had just $282,880 cash on hand and last year, it was forced to take out a $30 million loan to stay afloat.
Tuter, a former employee who was fired, says that selling the three stations is almost a final nail in the coffin. “I believe they are killing it off,” he told the paper.
UPI notes that Tom Evans, a board member, said that the financial problems are being overstated. Evans said that the bad economy is to blame.
“Sufficient funds were in the bank and, thankfully, we didn't spend everything on May 21, 2011,” Evans told the Contra Costa Times. “But it did force us to make quick changes.”
Camping is now 91. In 2011, he became obsessed with predicting judgement day, but couldn’t predict a stroke. After May 21 passed and the world was still here, he famously said he miscalculated and rescheduled it for October 21, 2011.