The three-month-old American Christian Television System (ACTS) is making inroads into a crowded cable television market. With more than one million subscribers, some of the system’s marketing practices are drawing fire from a larger, more established religious network.
ACTS was conceived and developed by the 14-million-member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). SBC members—mobilized in a grassroots marketing thrust—are telling local cable operators that ACTS is the best choice for their communities. Cable system operators often choose only one network that offers religious programming. When they choose ACTS, it is often at the expense of another religious network.
“We are not pleased with the way local ACTS boards have approached the cable companies, given them inaccurate portrayals of who we are, and construed themselves as an ‘answer’ to Christian television,” says Jack Hightower, marketing director for the PTL network.
Hightower says the ACTS marketing effort is “a powerful political machine” that goes beyond healthy competition. “PTL, CBN, and Trinity Broadcasting Network have for years vied in the marketplace with limited channel capacity,” he says. “Because of this, sometimes one or two [religious] networks will win and the other be left out in the cold. But we have never gone to a cable operator and said, ‘Kick them off and put us on.’ This is what some local ACTS boards have done.”
ACTS representatives admit to some early marketing mistakes. But for the most part, they say PTL is overreacting. “There is no discussion of who is already on the system or who needs to be kicked off,” says Lloyd Hart, national cable affiliate manager for ACTS. “It would only hurt us to force our way onto a cable system.”
“The enthusiasm on the part of SBC members promoting ACTS has been confused as pressure,” says ACTS representative Greg Warner. “But [Hightower’s] term ‘political machine’ far overstates what has happened. Nothing was ever that organized. We did not get Baptist people together to put pressure on anyone.”
Cable outlets in Little Rock, Arkansas, and in Fort Worth, Texas, have replaced some or all of PTL’s programming with ACTS. In Jackson, Mississippi, a cable system added ACTS and moved CBN down to the status of an optional service that carries an extra fee for subscribers. Hightower estimates that PTL could lose up to 10 percent of its 10 million subscribers if ACTS continues to gain acceptance among cable operators.
ACTS representatives on the national level are not to be blamed, Hightower says, adding that the problem lies with overzealous grassroots support. He says some local Southern Baptists have misrepresented PTL as a charismatic television network. “Though PTL is sponsored by a charismatic ministry, the network as a whole represents at least 10 denominations,” he says. Some of PTL’s programs feature people who would not be considered charismatics, he says, including Jerry Falwell and Robert Schuller.
Warner says a theological distinction has not been that pronounced in the marketing of ACTS. “I’m sure that in learning about ACTS, many people have concluded that we represent something different from the charismatic programming offered by PTL,” he says. “But we have not presented it that way purposefully.”
Says ACTS president Jimmy Allen: “Any aggressive marketing position creates problems.” Allen has stated publicly that anyone on the ACTS payroll who downgrades another network will be fired.
Deaths
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, 64, professor of American history and modern religious history at Yale University, a noted scholar of American church history, winner of the 1973 National Book Award for A Religious History of the American People (Yale Univ. Press); July 3, in New Haven, Connecticut, after a long illness.
Kenneth Geiger, 68, a past president of The Missionary Church, and Eugene Ponchot, 57, director of overseas missions for The Missionary Church; July 20, in Nigeria, in an automobile accident.
