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Christian networks battle over Dish Network
Three major Christian television networks are battling each other in a satellite broadcasting fight that has gone largely unreported.

In April, Dominion Video Satellite, which owns the Sky Angel satellite service, sued Echostar, the parent company of Dish Network, saying it violated a 1996 contract. Sky Angel, the company said, had exclusive rights to air Christian content on the Dish Network. So what were the Daystar Television Network and FamilyNet TV doing on new Dish channels?

Simple, said Echostar. FamilyNet TV is owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, but it isn't exclusively "Christian programming." As for the more religious Daystar, the satellite company said, federal law requiring satellite providers to grant at least 4 percent of their channels to "noncommercial programming of an educational or informational nature" takes precedence over the exclusive deal.

Last week, U.S. District Judge John L. Kane called Echostar's arguments "disingenuous," and issued a temporary injunction removing Daystar and FamilyNet from the Dish Network while the Sky Angel suit was worked out in arbitration.

"Based on my review of the relevant regulatory provisions that [Digital Broadcast Satellite services] have discretion to choose between qualified applicants, I find EchoStar was in no way 'required' to choose the Christian-themed programmers it did. Moreover, I find that FCC regulations do not preempt the exclusivity provisions of the agreement," Kane wrote.

Kane ridiculed claims that FamilyNet isn't religious programming, and suggested that both the Southern Baptist network and Echostar were dishonest. "To describe FamilyNet as anything other than Christian-religious programming is absurd," he said. "By analogy, one would have to say that Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Last Supper' is not a religious painting because it merely portrays thirteen men having dinner."

He also cited a 1998 contract between SkyAngel and FamilyNet in which the Baptist network "certified that its programming was predominantly Christian-religious, that it was aware of the EchoStar-Dominion exclusivity provisions and that its programming fell within the definition of Christian programming under that Agreement. There was no evidence adduced at the hearing even suggesting that FamilyNet has endured a programmatic epiphany. The only inference is that in presenting itself to EchoStar, FamilyNet engaged in some monumental fibbing."

In a Baptist Press article, North American Mission Board executive vice president Randy Singer counters that because FamilyNet's programming is evangelistic, it's not "religious" as defined by the Dish Network contract with Sky Angel, which uses the phrase "solely marketed to the Christian theme and content."

"Although a majority of FamilyNet's programming is Christian, it is not marketed solely to a Christian audience," Singer said. "The primary purpose of FamilyNet is to reach a non-Christian audience with the gospel. And, the most frustrating aspect of this whole thing was that the court never heard that argument, because neither FamilyNet nor Daystar was called to testify during the three-day hearing."

Singer also says that removing FamilyNet from the Dish Network would violate the First Amendment. "Dish could be ordered to remove our network solely because we're Christian," he said. " I pray that doesn't happen."

Constitutional concerns had been raised at trial, but Kane said they were "exceedingly fanciful and do not merit further comment."

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July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47