There are signs that Christian television may be emerging from its long infancy. Christians are buying stations. New production groups are pushing beyond the hoary songs-and-a-sermon format. Programs for the videotape machine market are being circulated. Increasingly, the Gospel is getting past the barriers to the vast prime-time non-Christian audience. It all leads some observers to believe we have entered the Decade of the Tube in evangelical communication.

Last month WHCT-TV Channel 18 in Hartford began transmitting Christian programs. The station was a $2 million gift from RKO to minister Ray Schoch, who runs the two-year-old KHOF-TV Channel 30 in Glendale, California, a station devoted exclusively to Christian programming.

Also last month Latin American evangelist Luis Palau during a Costa Rica crusade held forth on thirty-two live call-in and counseling type programs while beaming videotaped programs on a second channel.

This month five Canadian denominations joined scripts and launched “Talk-in,” a thirteen-week series on CFTO-TV, Toronto, anchor station for CTV, the nation’s privately owned network. The group was offered fifty-two weeks of time, but leaders, nervous about the shortage of good production ideas, opted for the smaller chunk.

The National Council of Churches recently began publishing a Cable Information Service to advise churches about the fast-developing cable-TV field.

And Logos has just released Shout It From the Housetops, the story of broadcaster Pat Robertson, 42, and his pioneer work in Christian television as head of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Robertson, who could almost double for TV’s Dale Robertson, is an ordained Southern Baptist minister with a degree in law from Yale. His WYAH-TV Channel 27 in Portsmouth, Virginia, is the state’s most powerful television station. According to many TV people, it is also the best-equipped facility on the East Coast outside New York City. It boasts four of the latest RCA color cameras ($75,000 each) and several videotape machines ($125,000 each), as well as many thousands of dollars’ worth of film cameras, projectors, switchers, audio boards, and other sophisticated gadgetry. It even has a computer-like animation programmer that can create cartoons. Two large studios have dimmer capability, something a lot of big secular stations lack. A waterfall comes tumbling out of a mountain scene at the flick of a faucet.

Robertson started his venture with an initial stake of $70 in 1960. In November of that year, the Federal Communications Commission granted him a permit for the first TV station in America scheduled to broadcast 50 per cent or more religious time. (The late evangelist Percy Crawford bought a Philadelphia station in the fifties, but it went under financially, failing to achieve the quantity of religious programming he envisioned.)

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The following fall WYAH-TV went on the air with one black-and-white camera and a handful of staffers. There were lapses as the cameraman changed lenses and location. Mice on occasion got fouled in the transmitter and blacked out the station, recalls Robertson. Once, he chuckles, the audio failed in the middle of a program, and someone on stage who knew sign language for the deaf finished the show.

The station today employs thirteen persons in production, a dozen in engineering, and three in marketing along with other personnel. The budget is $80,000 monthly; most of it is raised through contributions. An FM radio station is also housed in the facility (CBN operates six Christian radio stations in the United States and one in Bogota).

A recent addition to the CBN fold is WHAE-TV Channel 46 in Atlanta with a $50,000 monthly budget.

One of CBN’s most popular TV productions is the hour-long “Jim and Tammy” children’s show, begun in 1965 and now syndicated to stations in seventeen states. These include several NBC outlets. It pulls 2,000 letters a week, says host Jim Baker, 32. Viewers are invited to call follow-up counselors in the various localities. After one show a while back, he says, counselors reported 1,000 decisions for Christ.

The “700 Club” is another popular show. Robertson says he likes it “because it utilizes TV to the fullest.” It is a live audience-participation show; viewers call in prayer requests, relate experiences, and converse with studio guests and emcees. A bank of telephones is manned by volunteer counselors who get between 400 and 600 calls a night. The show originated as a fund-raising telethon in 1966 that turned into a revival right on the air, says Robertson.

Virtually all of CBN’s staff members have had the charismatic experience, beginning with Robertson, who says he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit while a student at Biblical Seminary in New York. Production manager Jerry Horstmann, 28, formerly with CBS and NBC, attends an anti-tongues Southern Baptist church but says he received the baptism while directing a telethon a few months ago.

Robertson soft-pedals Pentecostalism on the air, but Schoch’s KHOF-TV in Glendale does not. “We unabashedly proclaim the Full Gospel, and that is the secret of our success,” declares general manager Paul Crouch. The station operates on a $25,000 monthly budget with thirty-four fulltime staffers. It schedules eight hours of airtime daily, beginning at 3 P.M. Programming tends to be mostly of the music-and-sermons variety. But interest runs high, insists Crouch. One of the most popular is “Day of Discovery,” a music and Bible-study program emceed by Richard DeHaan, who teaches an anti-tongues position off the air.

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Other stations not as well known are operated by charismatic groups in Miami, Dallas, Indianapolis, and Phoenix. Rex Humbard operates Channel 55 in Akron. CBN is dickering for outlets in Baltimore and Boston, and others are negotiating in Pittsburgh and Chicago.

Numerous churches televise their services. At the national level, Humbard, Billy Graham, Kathryn Kuhlman, and Oral Roberts are the most visible personalities. They spend millions of dollars to purchase regular time slots on hundreds of stations. Each also has produced expensive prime time “specials.” Critics claim the specials are little more than embellished versions of the usual songs-and-sermon format, but spokesmen for the four reply that the shows get results (decisions and dollars)—“and that’s what counts.”

One of Canada’s best-known religious telecasters is David Mainse, 34, a Pentecostal minister who gave up his church to work fulltime on his “Crossroads” program, now in its ninth year and carried on ninety stations. He uses music and interviews people.

Several small independent broadcasters report that interviews and panel discussions of current issues usually draw larger audiences than straight sermons. The businessmen who sponsor “God’s Good News” on television stations in Maryland and Washington, D. C., lean heavily on interviews.

Some stations offer free time to established religious groups, but often at hours most people are asleep. And many evangelicals have complained that Protestant time is doled out to liberal Council of Churches people.

But, asserts church PR director Charles Polcaster, 24, of Chicago: “The old mystique that stations are prejudiced against evangelicals is a lie. They will program evangelicals—if they are top notch communicators who can adapt to format.” To prove his point he has gotten his pastor on nearly every talk show in town. And this month the pastor communicated evangelical thought on a panel discussing extra-marital sex on WLS-TV, an ABC outlet.

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Broadcasters are finding that religion is an in topic these days, and that secular stations will indeed use—and sometimes pay for—good religious productions. CBN is producing four-hour and six-hour packages for secular markets. The youthful Olde Towne Productions group of Philadelphia hopes to crack the youth market with contemporary music and a fresh approach.

Olde Towne was formed three years ago by Bible college students George King, his brother David, and Keith Lancaster. Recalls George King: “We knew that TV was where it’s at in communication. We had a vision for Christian TV. but we knew we couldn’t go with a stand-up preacher—it wouldn’t work with my age group.” Lancaster went on to get a degree in TV production while the Kings bore down on music. One of their ideas is a sort of musical version of First Tuesday. The pilot run, using poverty as a theme, will be aired by a Philadelphia station on prime time the night before Easter. The youths hope to syndicate the show nationwide.

Already syndicated: “The Feminine Touch” with Olde Towne’s Bev Richards. She shares recipes, discusses home-related issues (Women’s Lib, how to get along with hubby), and interviews personalities.

The Argentina-born Palau, one of Latin America’s best-known evangelists, believes that preaching is okay for the stadium but that something else works better in the studio: a simple rap session with his viewers. He has led many to Christ on the air. Converts are invited to come to the studio or a counseling center afterward. (In Quito, Ecuador, the secretary of the Communist party and an officer in the military junta prayed to receive Christ on the air.)

Many calls concern domestic and moral problems. After a week at Palau’s TV counseling center in Costa Rica, crusade coordinator Galo Vasquez commented bitterly, “Nowhere in Latin America have I seen an entire nation so troubled with matrimonial and sexual problems.” More than 10,000 packed the stadium to hear Palau preach.

Palau often buys simultaneous prime time on every channel in an area, guaranteeing a big audience—and perhaps a lasting impact on an entire nation.

Back In The Running

Brooks Hays, noted Baptist layman and former congressman, is challenging incumbent Wilmer Mizell of North Carolina for a seat in the U. S. House of Representatives. The 73-year-old Hays, a Democrat originally from Arkansas, is currently a vice-president of the National Council of Churches. Mizell, 41, a Republican and one-time major league pitcher, is also a devout layman. He belongs to the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

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