President of Southern Baptists’ Radio-TV Operation Resigns

The president of the Southern Baptists’ extensive radio and television operation resigned this week as the agency’s board of trustees was considering two new offers to buy the denomination’s cable television network.

Baptist Press reported that the Rev. Jimmy Allen, president of the denomination’s Radio-Television Commission since January, 1980, announced that he will become chief executive of one of the companies that has made an offer to buy the network, if the offer is accepted. The board was meeting in Ft. Worth, the commission’s headquarters.

The commission has a $7.7-million budget, of which its cable network, the American Christian Television System (ACTS), composes about half. The Rev. Richard T. McCartney, executive vice president of the commission, said about $5.5 million of the budget is subsidized by offerings from Southern Baptists.

Allen, 61, was president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 1977 to 1979. He helped create the network, which the commission says is available to 9.5 million cable subscribers. It went on the air in 1984.

In March, a $34-million deal to sell the network fell through. A group of investors who had signed a purchase agreement last summer was unable to raise purchase money and other conditions of the proposed sale, commission officials said.

The network has a debt of about $8 million. Harold Brundige, the commission’s board chairman, said he hoped the network could be sold and operated as a multi-denominational system.

“It’s imperative that the debt be taken care of if we are to continue,” Brundige said.

Allen announced last year that he would become a top executive of Friends of ACTS, the company that originally had agreed to buy the network. Chip Atkins, the head of the firm, also operates a San Antonio advertising agency.

Allen said on April 11 that Friends of ACTS had been bought by another group of investors led by Dallas-area businessman Ralph Tacker. The new group of investors submitted one of the offers now being considered. Allen would become a chief executive of the Tacker operation if that group’s offer is accepted. If that offer is not accepted, Allen said he will consider other career options, including a church pastorate.

The other offer to buy ACTS is from a group of investors led by a Ft. Worth businessman, Robert Sivley, who operates a television production company, Allen said.

Church spokesmen reported that a subsidiary of Atkins Advertising, ACTSCOM, sells advertising for the ACTS network and receives 49% of the proceeds. In the commission’s current fiscal year, ACTS had received $272,000 from ACTSCOM.

When the planned sale fell through March 14, Allen said, “I have felt the strategy of an ACTS network is the most effective way to preach the gospel to every person in this country. I will continue to pour my energy into that. I do not know what the future configuration of ACTS will be, but I do know that I have had a sense of vision that centers on this kind of strategy, and I want to help this network do what it can.”