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60 Media and religion in transition

religion or spirituality “sites,” but many others incidentally deal with reli-
gion along with other material. 50

Religious broadcasting and televangelism
Televangelism has faded from public consciousness in recent years. From
its emergence in the mid-1970s through most of the 1980s, religious
broadcasting achieved a high-profile presence on the airwaves and in
public discourse. Its luster faded a good deal as a result of a series of high-
profile scandals in the late 1980s leading several important “TV preachers”
to leave the air, and led to a general decline in public attention, though
audience sizes may not have actually changed that much.
Today, televangelism is more of a “sleeper” in the media landscape,
having settled into a comfortable, even significant place at the margins, in
combination with a vibrant religious radio market and an emerging and
significant Christian music industry. Religious television has actually
continued to expand. By the year 2000, there were 245 commercial and
fifteen noncommercial religious television stations on the air. In radio, the
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situation is also one of expansion, with the most recent figures including
over 800 stations each reporting that at least part of their day is formatted
“Christian” or “religious,” another 650 calling themselves “Gospel,” and
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thirty-four even self-designating as “New Age.” In addition, several cable
television channels are devoted to religion, including the (unofficial)
Catholic Eternal Word Television Network, which claims 64 million
subscribers on 2,275 cable systems in the US, the (also unofficial) National
Jewish Television Network, claiming 13 million subscribers on 600 cable
systems, and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the last remaining of the
original televangelism networks, claiming 46 million subscribers on 5,230
cable systems as well as 12.5 million direct-broadcast satellite subscribers.
The actual viewing numbers for these services are much smaller, most
likely a small fraction of claimed subscribers. The Odyssey Channel, a
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much less controversial service, founded by more mainstream religious
interests as an alternative to the televangelists, reached a peak subscriber
base in the neighborhood of 28 million homes, but has since been folded
into the Hallmark Channel. Pat Robertson’s 700 Club program, once the
pre-eminent example of the form, has also undergone a metamorphosis.
The Family Channel, which was the final version of the Christian
Broadcasting Network founded around Robertson’s show, was sold to
ABC, and now exists as the ABC Family Channel, where the Club can still
be seen, though largely no longer in prime-time.
Televangelism is not exclusively a US phenomenon, either. Major reli-
gious broadcasters have been actively engaged in exporting programming
abroad, and domestically produced programs are available in most coun-
tries and regions of the world. One significant exception has been the UK,