In the beginning, there was the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which begat CBN Satellite Service, which begat CBN Cable Network, which begat CBN Family Channel, which begat the Family Channel (FAM). Now FAM, wearing its fourth and perhaps permanent name, wants all cable-television viewers to know that it doesn`t spend all its time preaching anymore.
Although it is still the pious pulpit for cable`s best-known religious series, Pat Robertson`s long-running ”The 700 Club,” FAM now devotes only about 25 percent of its schedule to spiritual affairs. The rest is a secular- although sanitized-slate of what FAM calls family entertainment.
According to FAM president Tim Robertson, the oldest of Pat`s four children, family entertainment means programs that an entire family, no matter what the ages of its members, can sit down together and watch comfortably.
As defined by FAM, family entertainment means movies without cursing or nudity, sitcoms without lubricity, and a passel of classic western series such as ”Bonanza” and ”Gunsmoke.” FAM is the cable corral for more old oaters than any other ranch on the video range.
Before you curl your lip with a contempt, be advised that this pure-mouthed approach to the sometimes-rowdy marketplace of cable shines like a good deed in an evil world. FAM is the fifth-largest cable channel in number of subscribers (44.1 million) and the eighth-largest in advertising (more than $60 million expected this year).
The fruits of prosperity are readily visible here at the 700-acre headquarters of the Robertson empire. ”Baronial” is the best word to describe this perfectly manicured fief. There`s even a school here: CBN University-founded in 1977, the same year as the channel-with a current enrollment of 889 students.
FAM is headquartered in an impeccable three-story red-brick building done in the handsome Georgia Colonial style. About 150 employees toil here, breaking off their labors every day to attend a one-hour chapel service before lunch.
FAM is not the standard rags-to-riches kind of success story. It`s more like the saga of New York billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump. Like Trump, Marion Gordon ”Pat” Robertson was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, which he turned into a golden one.
Some of the bluest blood in Virgina flows through the veins of Robertson, 59. His ancestors include one signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Harrison, and two presidents of the United States-Harrison`s son William Henry Harrison (1841) and Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893), who was William Henry Harrison`s grandson. Pat`s father was A. Willis Robertson, a U.S. senator from Virginia for 20 years.
But in his biography, ”Shout It From the Housetops” (1972), Robertson begins the recital of his rise with the decision in 1956 to devote his life to religion, a turning point he accented by pouring out all the several kinds of whiskey that had pleased his palate until that time.
In 1960 for $37,000, Robertson bought a defunct TV station, WTOV, Channel 27 in Portsmouth, near here in the Tidewater section of Virginia, and renamed it WYAH. He named his newborn company the Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc. He created ”The 700 Club” in 1963 with 700 viewers each contributing $10 a month, a sum equal to WYAH`s monthly budget of $7,000.
Robertson took notice when Home Box Office begin to distribute cable programming nationally via satellite in 1975, and when Atlanta
”superstation” TBS, then WTCG, followed this lead in 1976. On April 29, 1977, he followed them onto the same satellite, RCA`s Satcom I, transforming WYAH into cable`s third national channel.
His new channel, called CBN Satellite Service, was all religious then, preaching and praying day and night, just as WYAH had done. But in 1981, he renamed it CBN Cable Network and began mixing in a few entertainment programs, such as CBN`s first original series, a Christian soap opera called ”Another Life,” and some of the great, ancient comedies of broadcast television, such as ”I Married Joan,” ”The Life of Riley” and ”The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show.”
In 1988, Robertson took a deeper plunge, renaming his service CBN Family Channel. Last month, FAM began dumping the CBN initials altogether, a process it hopes to complete when the Family Channel premieres its new fall season Sept. 4.
Belief is widespread in the cable industry that FAM is shedding its old CBN name because it thinks that any kind of religious designation is a handicap in attracting advertisers. But FAM president Timothy B. Robertson, 34, in a one-hour interview in his office here, said that isn`t so.
”We already had 85 of the top 100 advertisers on the air,” he said. And it is true that FAM`s schedule is loaded with commercials from an all-star list of America`s better-known TV sponsors: Procter & Gamble, General Mills, General Foods, Ford, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Nabisco, Nestle, Campbell`s Soup, Clorox, K Mart and Kraft.
The decision to turn away from purely religious programming probably has Pat and Tim Robertson praying thankfully all the way to the bank. Six religious channels are currently revolving in the cable universe, and FAM is bigger than any four of them combined.
In order of size, the six religious channels are:
Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), 12 million subscribers; Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), 9.9 million; American Christian Television System (ACTS) and the Inspirational Network (INSP), each with 9.5 million;
National Jewish Television (NJT), 7.2 million, and Vision Interfaith Satellite Network (VISN), 5.5 million.
FAM first became profitable in 1984. At present, it gets about 70 percent of its revenue from commercials, which average $1,630 per 30 seconds in prime time, and 30 percent from cable companies, which pay it 8 cents per month per subscriber.
Tim Robertson became president of FAM in 1987, the same year his father embarked upon an unsuccessful 7 1/2-month run for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. Tim received a bachelor`s degree in English from the University of Virginia in 1977 and a master of divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, Mass., in 1981. He has always worked in the TV business, however, never as the pastor of a church.
”The 700 Club” continues to appear prominently on FAM`s schedule, occupying three different time slots for a total of 1/2 hours each day. But Tim said no viewer contributions to ”700” are used to operate FAM.
In the second quarter of 1989, the five highest-rated programs on FAM were all westerns, in order: ”Bonanza,” ”Gunsmoke,” ”The Rifleman,”
”Bordertown” and ”Wagon Train.” All but ”Bordertown” are evergreens that ran previously on broadcast networks.
”Bordertown,” which premiered Jan. 7 and will begin its second season Sept. 16, is a new series, a joint venture of FAM with a Canadian company and a French company. It`s about a middle-aged U.S. marshal and a handsome young Canadian Mountie who jointly try to keep order in 1880 in a town that straddles the U.S.-Canadian border between Montana and Alberta.
Neither of the ”Bordertown” heroes drinks or smokes, which Tim said fits in with FAM`s belief that ”role models” should not indulge in those vices. He said some of the guidelines that FAM issues to its producers include:
”We don`t want to glorify violence as though it`s a thrilling thing. It should be a last resort, an unfortunate consequence.
”We don`t want to portray casual sex, or even sex outside marriage, as something that doesn`t lead to psychological problems. TV shows sex as something easy to enter without becoming involved, but shows no consequences like pregnancy, abortion or sexually transmitted diseases.
”Those are two things we feel particularly strong about.”
Asked what series on the broadcast networks he would consider unsuitable for his FAM schedule, Tim Robertson named three of the biggest hits on NBC.
” `Cheers` has degenerated into a one-joke show: Is Sam going to get the new girl into bed? Eighty percent of `L.A. Law` would be perfect for our network. The other 20 percent, they get into the kinky and bizarre.”
But he reserved his harshest criticism for Assistant District Attorney Dan Fielding, a character portrayed on ”Night Court” by John Larroquette. He called Fielding ”the lewdest character who has ever been on television, in my opinion.”
So look for nothing but fair play and clean living from ”Batman,”
another old series rerunning on FAM, with Adam West as the Caped Crusader, or from the new version of ”Zorro” that FAM will begin showing in January, with Duncan Regehr as the swashbuckling swordsman.
”We have a mission to provide positive family entertainment,” Tim Robertson concluded.
