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The greatest stories ever told on Sirius radio?

NEW YORK — Dave and Susan Konig are having a ball on their new radio show, mocking their least favorite Bible movies.

Dave, a veteran comedian, dismisses Jesus Christ Superstar as “so bombastic,” but saves his real ire for The Greatest Story Ever Told.

“Was it inaccessible?” Susan asks.

“Well, Jesus was Max von Sydow,” her husband answers. “You can’t be more inaccessible than Max von Sydow.”

Gus Lloyd, another host on the Konigs’ channel, recently asked callers to decide if he is a “petty little man” because he can’t stand it when other drivers cut him off on an exit ramp.

“I try to repent, but I’m not very good at it,” he confesses.

This is a new kind of Catholic radio. It seeks to be funny and fresh before holier-than-thou. Gentle doses of wisdom and commentary are dispensed between wacky bits that wouldn’t sound out of place on a classic rock station’s morning drive show (except without the adolescent sex jokes). It’s the Catholic Channel on Sirius satellite radio, but depending on when you tune in, you may not even know it’s Catholic radio.

And that’s the whole idea.

“I want it to be a show,” Dave Konig says. “I want people to be as entertained as possible. It’s not for theologians.”

The Catholic Channel became part of the Sirius lineup (channel 159) in December, bringing some serious Catholic pedigree. Its programming is completely produced by the Archdiocese of New York.

Sirius first approached the archdiocese a few years ago to see whether Cardinal Edward Egan might be interested in hosting a show. The timing wasn’t right, but the initial talks evolved into something much more ambitious: a full-fledged Catholic channel that would move past the saints-and-sinners, frozen-in-time nature of most Catholic media.

The channel would try to appeal to devout Catholics, lapsed Catholics, non-Catholics and maybe even a few closet Catholics who subscribed to Sirius so they could listen to Howard Stern.

“The focus is on people’s lives,” says Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the archdiocese and general manager of the Catholic Channel. “As Catholics, what do we think about what’s on TV, at the movies, in the news, what people are talking about every day?”

The Konigs are at the heart of what the Catholic Channel is trying to be. They’re suburbanites with four kids who talk about the funny and familiar trials of trying to raise happy, well-adjusted Catholics in the modern world.

Susan says that her decision to put her youngest child in day care so she could do the show provoked a tremendous reaction from listeners, both pro and con.

“We’re a regular married couple and probably make people feel normal,” says Susan, an accomplished writer on family issues.

Egan has sounded increasingly at ease during his weekly show, whether talking about wearing a new Easter suit as a boy or running into Lionel Hampton, “one of the five or six greatest jazz artists there ever was.”

Sirius has seen its subscriber base jump from 1 million at the end of 2004 to 6 million at the end of 2006, thanks in large part to the addition of Stern’s show in January 2006. Sirius and its main competitor, XM Satellite Radio, which has 7.6 million subscribers, announced plans in February to merge and create a satellite radio giant. But it could be months before federal regulators rule on the plan.

Scott Greenstein, president of entertainment and sports at Sirius, says the Catholic Channel is a natural fit for commercial-free satellite radio. The nation’s 66 million Catholics represent about one in four Americans.

The radio arm of the Eternal Word Television Network, the very traditional and very popular Catholic TV network, is one channel up from the Catholic Channel. But Zwilling says the new channel is going for a different audience. “It didn’t make sense for us to be EWTN lite.”

With total authority over programming, the Archdiocese of New York was given the rare opportunity to play Michelangelo and create something new.

“For a change, the Catholic Church is on the ground floor of a new medium, instead of trying to play catch-up,” Zwilling says. “I am firmly convinced that 20 years from now, satellite radio will be like cable TV today.”