The Christian Channel

Today at lunch a friend brought up the idea of “quality Christian television programming”. What if you could have a target audience cable channel that actually had intiguing programming? Forget about TBN, PAX, The 700 Club, or whatever. The purpose would not be evangelism but to have shows that edified the church body. What would be some of the issues?

While everyone brought up great points, my thoughts are that the Christian market would SAY that they would want it but would actually be turned off by shows that actually dealt with real life issues that don’t always end on a happy note. As large as the niche market is, I don’t think you would have enough “Christians” to support shows that leave you with the resolve of something like the autobiography of Jim Elliot. I can read the review now, “The Christian Channel brings you the Jim Elliot Story : Watch some idiot knowingly walk into his own slaughter and not even defend himself – he should have read the Purpose Driven Life.”

Another problem I see in Christian drama is that everyone would bring their own personal convictions into the show. Again, as small as the niche is, you would inevitably in some way tick off every group of people that feel you are misrepresenting them as Christians. Imagine the baptists’ reaction when a fictional Christian has a beer with his dinner or someone baptizes their baby.

The idea of a Christian talk show like Oprah or Dr. Phil was mentioned. Again, not a big enough target audience. Imagine a show on divorce and the expert offers this advice to a battered wife: “Well, the Bible only mentions sexual infidelity as the only justifiable reason for divorce. If divorce was an option for physical abuse then you would think that He would have mentioned it.” I just get the feeling that not that many people would want to watch people die to themselves and take up their cross to follow Jesus.

This blog post is brought to you by “Hard To Believe” by John MacArthur.