Soap Opera and Salvation

By JAY COCKS

CBN beams "wholesome "shows to 14 million homes

"That junk on television," Scott I fumed. "Sure, the good guys usually win. But that's not what grabs the audience. It's what the bad guys do. Kids learn how to mug the defenseless. How to use guns and knives. How to get high on alcohol and drugs. That's what they remember."

Well, forget it. The Christian Broadcasting Network means to wash all that away in a tide of righteousness. According to a CBN promotion tape, Scott Davidson, quondam hero of CBN's flagship soap opera, Another Life, is not only a media analyst and anchorman of the "7 O'Clock News," he is "unique in the newsroom. Once he was a cynic, like his colleagues a man who was spiritually empty. That's changed. Faith has given Scott the strength to go beyond reporting. Now he gets involved."

Or did. Unfortunately, Scott was dispatched to that great city room in the sky when the actor playing him quit the role and the Rev. Pat Robertson, 51, the founder and spiritual leader of CBN, decided that Another Life needed an even more exalted spiritual emphasis. "There is a yearning inside of people for the ultimate meaning in life," Robertson says. "We hope to come up with programs that provide answers to that yearning. The problem is not just sex and violence on the major networks, it's the banality."

Certainly the spirit is willing, and the means for reform near at hand. CBN, which Robertson founded in 1960 with $70 cash, one camera and a fading 1,000-watt station in Portsmouth, Va., has become a multimillion-dollar operation (1981 income: $68 million). By the mid-'70s, CBN had added two more owned-and-operated stations, in Atlanta and Dallas, to its Portsmouth base, but what really turned the electronic tide for Robertson was a satellite. CBN beat out its brethren by leasing a transponder on RCA's Satcom 2 satellite in April 1977, thus enlarging its video congregation by connecting with a maze of cable systems that now serve 14.5 million homes. Robertson predicts the total will reach 19 million by year's end.

According to the National Cable Television Association, eight religious programmers, from National Jewish Television to the Eternal Word Network, rent time on satellite transponders, and three beam out round-the-clock inspiration. CBN, however, is by far the largest notch in the electronic Bible Belt, and its 387-acre headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va., clearly reflects its status. The $35 million complex boasts a $22 million state-of-the-art studio, a university that offers graduate courses in communications and education, and a headquarters shaped like a cross. When an announcer quotes U.N. figures on overpopulation and the screen is filled with the wretched of the earth, it seems CBN has dedicated itself to evangelizing the world.

The CBN programming formula combines straightforward but soft-peddled message shows (a ten-week "investigative series" on pornography narrated by Efrem Zimbalist Jr.) with putative entertainments ("George, the misadventures of a mis-cheev-ious St. Bernard") and some creaky reruns (The Life of Riley, My Little Margie). Another element, occasionally, is partisan politics. Robertson, son of the late U.S. Senator Willis Robertson of Virginia and a graduate of Yale Law School who can speak in tongues, has been known to hold forth on such nonsectarian topics as busing (he does not favor it), Taiwan (the U.S. should defend it) and deficit spending (God forbids it). Views like this have caused some alarm in quarters where such fundamentalist precepts clash like gongs in a string quartet. The Rev. Michael Mclntyre, the religious liaison in Norman Lear's People for the American Way, even suggests that Robertson's soft-spoken style is "a far better political strategy" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell's brimstone hectoring.

Robert Slosser, former assistant national editor of the New York Times who had a "conversion experience" in 1965 that eventually led him to join CBN, says network competition "provides us with tremendous pressure to create our own programming that is modern but still wholesome." This can lead to some touchingly antique outpourings on Another Life (girl in a clinch with boyfriend: "Russ, if you ever sense I'm weakening and losing control, it'll be up to you to stop because you love me"). It also leads to a morning news show called USAM, which aims to start the day at 6 a.m. with "good information, entertainment and the positive attitude [viewers] need to really make a difference in their day." Ultimately it leads to the 700 Club, a real case study in participatory television.

CBN was ready for the broadcasting boneyard back in the early '60s, when Robertson hit on the idea of getting viewers to bankroll the network. If 700 of them could donate $10 a month, he could crack the monthly nut. He created the 700 Club, a hybrid of telethon, talk show and Sunday school class. The viewers responded, and the network got its footing.

Volunteers work the phones on each program, taking donations from viewers. Robertson's co-host is Ben Kinchlow, 45, a former Black Muslim and holder of a third-degree belt in karate who has, according to CBN publicity, "never met a stranger" (perhaps because of that karate). While Kinchlow cozies up to the audience, Robertson joshes with such guests as Little Richard and Anita Bryant, who often show up not to plug a movie or an album but to talk about Christianity. He will even lecture occasionally ("The word of knowledge is one of the nine manifestations of the Holy Spirit...").

It may not be exactly Johnny Carson and Floyd R. Turbo, but it has its effect. CBN does accept advertising, and last-year landed a $5 million contract with Richardson-Vicks. But more than 90% of CBN'S 1981 net came from viewer contributions. The 700 Club now has over 285,000 members, each pledged to send in a monthly $ 15. And those phones keep on ringing. --By Jay Cocks

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