Spiritainment: Redefinition of Religious Television in the U.S., 1988-1999
By Rev. Bernard R. Bonnot
[Rev. Bob (Bernard R.) Bonnot, S.T.L., Ph.D. is a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, U.S.A. He served as Senior Vice-president for Religious Affairs at the Hallmark Channel. This text was updated in September 2001.]
I sing the song of a journey from entrepreneurial televangelism to interfaith Spiritainment. It is a journey like that of Abraham: it starts with a call, is pursued with faith, and directed toward a land promised. Like Abraham, one could only image the destination and could claim it only step by step over many years. Then the journey continues.
Historical Context
The journey starts with the broadcast dominance of mainline religious groups in the United States. The 1934 U.S. Communications Act required national networks and local broadcast stations to provide public service time, a requirement that persisted until Congress deregulated the broadcast industry in 1972. Religious bodies qualified for public service time. To keep things manageable in America’s prolific, pluralistic context, the broadcasters decided to deal with only three religious groups: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish, each on a collective basis. These three enjoyed free airtime, free production, and free promotion. The TV networks funded corporate units to produce religious programming. Given that policy and practice, religious groups, and individuals outside the triune “mainline”, had to fend for themselves. They learned to produce programs at their own expense, pay to get them aired if a station would take them, and do their own promotion. Steep as that challenge was, evangelicals and independents met it more often than most noticed at the time. The mainline religious bodies dominated the U.S. media from 1934 until 1972, but a shadow group followed behind.
In 1972 the marketplace for broadcast religion changed. Networks and stations progressively dropped their public service. All faith programmers had to pay; all had to produce their own programs, at their own expense. For the mainliners, this was onerous. For the others, it was business as usual. Little by little the outsiders overshadowed the mainliners on TV across the land. Since they were willing to pay, while the Protestants, Catholics and Jews were not, station owners knew whose programs to choose.
In the mid-70s, satellites in the sky married with cables running down streets to generate a cable industry. The evangelicals and independents were ready, willing, and able to step into that opportunity, almost immediately. Within three years (1975-1978) they launched three cable channels – CBN, TBN and PTL. Meanwhile the mainliners, unwilling to pay to play, studied the situation.
By 1980 these two dynamics in broadcast and cable respectively brought the outsiders to dominate religious television in the United States. Entrepreneurial evangelicals were particularly prominent. They usually operated on their own initiative rather than on behalf of the denomination to which they may have belonged. They became the televangelists. When things grow too fast, problems are sometimes at play. By the mid-1980s the televangelists had both defined religious television in the culture and had become its worst distortion. They were religious television’s face to the nation and its shame. One need not rehearse their politicization by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, their money hustling empire-building by Oral Roberts and PTL, nor their side-line escapading by Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. All that is well known. It was sickening.
The problems became obvious in 1987. The abuse of religion on cable embarrassed the rapidly growing cable business. Cable had loosed the televangelists into America’s homes. Denominational communicators were embarrassed for allowing the vacuum that religious entrepreneurs rushed to fill. Into this situation came a call to both cable and church. From their embarrassment emerged a shared determination to redefine religious television.
‘Religious Television” in 1988: Entrepreneurial Televangelism
The starting point of the journey I sing was religious television as defined by televangelists in the mid-1980s. It resembled a tent revival, featuring “renowned” evangelists (they were on TV), connected with no specific church in preaching from the Bible. There was lots of stage pizazz, lots of music, lots of talk and ‘celebrity’ testimony, lots of emotion, lots of expressive (often tearful) prayer, lots of judgmental calls to repentance, and lots of appeals for donations. They often laced their shows with severe critiques of the dominant culture and appeals to viewers to undo the work of Satan in the individual soul and in society at large. They often worked a political agenda, always conservative, implicitly Republican. They appealed to the poor but looked like they were rich. They often preached a prosperity gospel: “give to the Lord through me and you will be blessed.” Many became rich.
The call for reform came as God’s call often does -- in an unexpected way from an unexpected source. Stirrings of protest arose in the religious soul here and there across America. In 1985 and 1986, these attained initial national articulation in small sessions held during the annual gathering of the North American Broadcast Section of the World Association for Christian Communication (NABS-WACC). Those stirrings moved into action in the Spring of 1987 when the nation’s leading cable operator, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), contacted representatives of the mainline churches and asked, “Where are you? Why aren’t you doing anything?”
1988-92: Setting the Direction
Thus called, the mainliners repeated their standard mantra: “We’re here, we’re big, we’re important and we don’t pay to do television!” They offered to do something the cable industry paid. Fortunately, the industry agreed, on condition that the faith groups (1) work together to (2) create a religious programming service representative of faith in the United States, and (3) market it to the faith community. The faith groups accepted and, like Abraham, set off for a land that existed only somewhere in God’s promise and their imaginations. The faith leaders declared they intended “to redefine religious television.” They formed the not-for-profit National Interfaith Cable Coalition, Inc. (NICC) and in early 1988 articulated what they would not do on their channel: fund-raising, proselytizing, or maligning of other people’s faith. They would seek to build bridges of understanding between groups and among people. They would address the issues of the day and attempt to bring the perspectives of faith and values to bear on the public discourse of the nation. They would promote the values of love, justice, reconciliation, and hope. They would seek to help people grow spiritually and religiously. Their channel was to be a land flowing with milk and honey.
Where was it? What did it look like? The Southern Baptists thought they knew and wanted to be the land where NICC would “redefine religious television”. They offered NICC a home on their “faith and family” cable service, ACTS (American Christian Television System), started in 1984. A United Methodist group operating out of Shreveport, Louisiana offered their Alternate Views Network. It provided cable systems a few hours of programming a week that did not tell people what to think but taught them how to think. An evangelical marketer from Albuquerque, New Mexico offered his idea for a Gospel Music Network as a perfect antidote for the “dollar a holler” programming that dominated religious television. None of these tempting territories fit NICC’s sense of purpose and destiny. The promised land was someplace else, NICC knew not where. So, the coalition wandered on, guided by imagination, instinct, and faith.
In September of 1988 NICC, with TCI’s support, launched the Vision Interfaith Satellite Network (VISN). The church communications specialists who constituted the NICC Board, together with a few full-time TV professionals hired as staff, elaborated a mathematical formula for the allocation of time among the participating faith groups (then about 15, today more than 70). They articulated Standards and Practices. They gathered available programming and developed a schedule that interwove worship, preaching and teaching with news and information, music, drama, talk and entertainment. The pattern was a cluttered checkerboard, neither pure religion nor pure entertainment. It was different and it was theirs! VISN launched on September 19, 1988.
By the summer of 1990 NICC had sufficient direction and enough programming in the right mix to expand VISN to a 24-hour service. They had honed some key principles and distinguishing characteristics. They had a vision for VISN and a competent staff to run it. These pilgrims were out of imagination and into reality. They still searched for their promised land, but they were moving forward, and TCI was pleased enough with their progress to extend its commitment and support.
1992-1995: Mapping the Direction
In 1992 developments in the cable environment, expiring satellite contracts, and some hard bargaining brought ACTS and VISN together on the same cable channel. ACTS’ commitment to faith and family programming and its experience in producing audience-winning programs strengthened NICC’s grasp of how to succeed. ACTS’ titles generally drew stronger audiences than did VISN’s due in part to a willingness to “entertain.” The Gaither Homecoming Hour, a Christian music variety show, became the channel’s best-rated program. Religious truths and spiritually motivating messages, wrapped in an entertaining way, could clearly reach a broad audience.
In 1994, the wisdom of the day argued that a channel’s name had to say what it was about so interested people could find it. So VISN/ACTS became the Faith & Values Channel. For the first time, the channel nominally presented itself as religious. Management simplified the checkerboard schedule by introducing weekday strips, but a dysfunctional hardline separation of VISN and ACTS programming remained, obstructing audience flow. An enhanced sales staff grew the number of systems carrying Faith & Values and Nielsen reported strengthened viewership.
By mid-1995 the channel’s income matched its expenses. NICC’s effort to “redefine religious television” no longer needed subsidy, but it was $30 million in debt (to TCI) and progressing about as rapidly as the Israelites through the desert. To get across the Jordan River and into cable’s promised land faster, the channel needed a surge of energy and resource. Negotiations turned the channel’s banker (TCI) into a 49% partner, eliminating the debt. The channel became for-profit though NICC remained the managing partner. When the channel’s church-based president retired, the partners replaced him with a faith-based businessman. They changed the channel’s name to Odyssey to lower its ‘in your face religion’ profile. These steps signaled the pilgrims had learned “religious TV redefined” had to operate like a business. From its beginning, NICC knew that on-air fund-raising was corruptive. Its “no fund-raising principle” was integral to whatever religious television redefined had to be, but the faith group folk in 1988 were not comfortable starting a “business.” Businesses generate, from the service provided, the resources needed to operate and grow. Engaging a business executive was a logical sequel of no fund-raising, but it took NICC eight years to take that step. Meanwhile the channel did what not-for-profit enterprises usually do. They relied on TCI’s handout.
Religious television as defined by the televangelists appealed to only 5% of the potential audience in the early 1980s. Both NICC and the Southern Baptists instinctively knew that the redefinition of religious television had to be accessible to a much broader audience. So, they used only implicitly religious names, VISN and ACTS. The move to Faith & Values satisfied cable operators’ need for evidence of religion in their line-up, but for NICC it was a step off the chosen path. NICC corrected that in 1996 with a culturally evocative name, Odyssey, suggesting its religious and spiritual meaning by appending the phrase “Exploring life’s journey”. The secular-minded viewer would try Odyssey for something adventurous; the spiritually minded would tune in for something spiritually helpful on the pilgrimage of life. Religious television redefined needed to appeal to the entire available audience.
NICC’s aim throughout was to enrich rather than proselytize. The now 70+ faith groups represented by the coalition increasingly saw Odyssey as a vehicle through which they could share their spiritual wisdom with anyone willing to tune in. They reached regular churchgoers from their pulpits. They intended VISN to reach the many others who believe but seldom if ever occupy a pew.
1995-1998: En Route
Odyssey continued to grow – roughly 20% in carriage and 100% in viewing - between 1995 and 1998. NICC believed it was closing in on its destination. But a river stood between them and the promising land they saw. The partnership with TCI/Liberty Media in 1995 stabilized Odyssey financially but did not bring the additional financial, programmatic, and marketing resources needed to get the channel across the river. Newer services with deeper pockets and fresher programming bridged the river and moved swiftly into substantial cable carriage and viewing. Odyssey needed another partner, one with a compatible mission and a full library. In June 1997, the untimely death of Gary Hill, Odyssey’s businessman President, added urgency to the situation.
When God calls, God blesses. Wonderfully compatible partners -- not one but two -- Hallmark Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company, appeared like manna from heaven, with an anointed leader on board. Hallmark and Henson had 50 and 40 years of TV production experience respectively. Their libraries bulged with award-winning titles and heart-winning characters. The two together had been exploring ways to start a channel of their own. Then they found Odyssey!
Hallmark Entertainment’s mission (to ‘provide meaningful entertainment for families on television’) and Henson’s mission (to ‘educate and delight children and their parents using media’) fit happily with NICC’s mission (‘to make religious faith visible on television’). Two of the best and most trusted brands in TV entertainment, both master storytellers, added their production credibility and marketing skills to 80 of the most authentic and trusted brands in the world of faith. Hallmark consistently produced the most-watched programming on television. Henson created globally recognized characters such as Kermit and Miss Piggy. NICC gathered millions weekly to worship and learn about God. It seemed a partnership made in heaven.
Still, it had to work on earth. An NICC, TCI/Liberty Media, Hallmark Entertainment and Jim Henson Company partnership was accomplished in November of 1998. Margaret Loesch, creator of the acclaimed Fox Kids Network Worldwide, became President and CEO, the channel’s Joshua, commissioned to lead the faithful tribes across the river. She polished the channel’s name to “Odyssey: A Hallmark and Henson Network” and trumpeted this mission to breach Jericho’s walls: “To enrich the lives of families and individuals with programming that empowers, entertains, explores and inspires. Odyssey will explore life’s journey with a mix of values-based, family-oriented, and religious programming”.
1999: Journey’s End; Future’s Beginning
Odyssey’s 1998 partnership with Hallmark and Henson completed the historic NICC effort to redefine religious television. In a word, the promised land is “Spiritainment.”
The land itself is entertainment. That is television’s primary function in U.S. culture. People, including religiously oriented folk, usually turn the TV on to get entertainment. NICC instinctively grasped this ultimate destination when it set out, but it took the interfaith coalition ten long years to see the land clearly and to embrace entertainment fully. NICC’s partnering, first with Liberty and then with Hallmark and Henson, two master entertainers, gave their instinct full play. NICC’s faith groups’ vision was clarified: wandering in the cable desert, its struggle to do quality television, its sharing with ACTS, and its partnering with Liberty. They fully accept that entertainment is central to their redefinition of religious television.
But entertainment is only the promised land, the context. The purpose, pursued through entertainment, is to touch the soul, to uplift the mind, to enrich the spirit, to dispose people to welcome the Spirit who opens and bedazzles peoples’ inmost selves if given the opportunity and time to do so. Adam Pinsker, the Quaker representative to NICC’s Membership Board and a veteran of the arts, helped all NICC members see the compatibility of entertainment and spiritual purpose. He noted that entertainment basically means engaging people’s attention and opening their minds so they can consider new ideas. He affirmed that “amusement” too is a part of God’s work. The term derives from the way a dog lifts its muzzle to sniff out a scent. Amusement, rightly used, can help people “sniff out” the good and worthwhile and valuable, even the divine, in a context that, like the dog’s search for a scent, is full of play and fun. That keeps the dog, and us, going.
Religious Television in 1999: Spiritainment
“Spiritainment” is religious television redefined. Among its key principles are:
Entertainment is the context, spiritual meaning and delight, the purpose. When people are done watching Odyssey, a residue of spiritual enrichment must remain that makes the passing of time worthwhile. Spiritainment aims to hold people’s attention for nobler ends than simply seeing the next commercial.
Spiritainment does not bastardize religious programming by reducing it to mere entertainment. Spiritainment customizes religious programming for the entertainment context, but the organizing principle remains spiritual. Celebrating a Mass for television differs from televising a parish Mass as a papal Mass differs from a parish Mass. But it must remain the Mass.
In Spiritainment, all the entertainment must be compatible with the religious and spiritual mission of the effort. Entertainment that contradicts faith and values would confuse viewers and neutralize its spiritainment mission.
Spiritainment should be run like a business, earning its way by the quality product it provides to a marketplace in need. Spiritainment does not rely on donations to a “good cause” from either supportive institutions or willing viewers. No fund-raising.
Spiritainment offers its spiritual riches without any overt or covert effort to manipulate the response of its viewers. Spiritainment draws people solely by the beauty of the Divine and the Human and the Divine-in-the-Human it projects. No proselytizing.
Spiritainment appeals to the broadest possible audience, offering viewers something good and worthwhile – truth about the spiritual life as grasped and traditionally lived by trustworthy communities of faith – without denigrating anyone else’s grasp of the truth or the dignity and value of anyone’s life and worth. No maligning.
Odyssey, with Hallmark and Henson, presented its first version of Spiritainment on Easter Sunday, April 4. The network’s first quarter did not constitute a perfect entrance into the Promised Land. The second version over the summer of 1999 provided an improved weave of entertaining programming and interfaith spirituality. Significant progress was made for the full premiere of Odyssey: A Hallmark and Henson Network in the fall of 1999. Occupying the land is hard work. Many others are already there. The walls of Jericho did not collapse at the sound of Odyssey’s trumpets. All were not supportive of Odyssey’s initiative. Followers of the old kind of religious television accused Odyssey of abandoning the field. Some rulers of the cable kingdom professed confusion at Odyssey’s blend of religion and family entertainment, separate and distinct categories in their minds. Even as a Hallmark Network, Odyssey’s progress was slow. Spiritainment was not acclaimed. The journey continued.
Reflections on the Journey
The long journey to Spiritainment was a response to God’s call, a long journey of faith. NICC kept listening to the prophets’ counsels and, little by little, clarified just where God wanted it to dwell. When it found the land to settle, it bonded with the allies it needed to succeed. It redefined religious television. Other religious channels increasingly pitch themselves as faith and values laden, ecumenical (if not interfaith) and entertaining, without fund-raising. They pale in comparison, but NICC can thank them for the compliment of imitation.
Several reflections flow from this journey. First, the coalescing and collaboration of various tribes has been crucial, as it was in the success of Israel. No single faith group could have redefined religious television. All the faith groups together could not have redefined religious television. Major television players such as TCI/AT&T, Hallmark Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company somehow had to become involved. Second, a willingness to experiment was important. NICC had to scout a variety of lands along the way while following the call. It had to welcome new elements into its coalition, even former rivals. It had to expand its embrace and adjust its sense of what “making religious faith visible on television” really meant. It had to proceed with a sense of adventure, confident only by virtue of its faith in God. Third, using H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic paradigm, NICC’s redefinition of religious television clearly involved moving from a Christ-against-Culture religious TV message to a Christ-transforming-Culture stance on the part of religious communicators.
As to the future, nothing was certain. Israel has had its ups and downs to this very day in occupying the land promised to Abraham. Odyssey’s transforming journey continued when it was renamed the Hallmark Channel in August 2001. Death-resurrection is the cycle. The biblical record testifies to the eventual success of Abraham’s descendants so long as they stay faithful to God’s call.
This brief history is a tribute to the National Interfaith Cable Coalition’s faithful response to its mandate to “redefine religious television.” Though at it for only ten years toward the close of the second millennium, NICC’s interfaith redefinition of religious television and its embodiment as “Spiritainment” on what became the Hallmark Channel, was meaningful service to humankind. It deserved to survive and thrive long into the new millennium.