Curtain Raiser : Adventist Preacher Will Appear Weekly on Soviet Television

Despite a 35-year run as a television preacher, George Vandeman is barely a household name even in Thousand Oaks, where he produces his Seventh-day Adventist show, “It Is Written.”

But Vandeman is about to score an international coup over such better-known American televangelists as Robert Schuller of Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral and Pat Robertson, host of the “700 Club.”

If all goes as planned, Vandeman, 74, soon will become the first American televangelist to have a regularly scheduled weekly television program in the Soviet Union.

“We have a contract with the Soviet government,” Vandeman said. “We’re on prime time, and we’re very grateful for that.”

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has agreed to supply a professional television production studio in Moscow for the Soviets in exchange for a weekly time slot for “It Is Written,” said Natasha Priahina of the Foreign Relations Department of Soviet National Television.

“It’s unique. We’ve never had anything like that,” Priahina said by telephone from Moscow. “It’s unprecedented that a foreign television company rents time weekly for a religious broadcast.

“We’ve had a kind of religious program on television, but they were spontaneous--they were called ‘Sunday Sermons.’ We had ‘Sunday Sermons’ for a couple of months.”

Priahina said Vandeman’s show is scheduled to air Friday evenings at 6:30 beginning as early as June or July and will have a potential audience of 40 million.

Given the current political situation in the Soviet Union, however, Adventist officials concede that there still could be some glitches.

Past efforts by American preachers to crack Soviet television have shown how difficult it can be for even the most persuasive televangelists to survive changing Soviet policies.

Schuller was the first foreign churchman to appear on Soviet television when he delivered a Christmas Eve message in 1989. And amid much ballyhoo, he later contracted to produce monthly 30-minute inspirational messages for the Soviet people.

But those messages were pulled from the airwaves by Soviet authorities with no given reason after the first one aired last Dec. 9.

Vandeman and the Adventists say they are not going into the deal with the Soviets blindly.

“There’s some risk involved because of the insecurity of the government,” said Glenn Aufderhar, president of the Seventh-day Adventist Media Center in Newbury Park. “But we feel that the group we’re working with is operating in good faith.”

While Schuller was dealing with Soviet National Television, formerly called Gostelradio Television, Vandeman and the Adventists are negotiating with a different government bureaucracy, the Soviet Ministry of Communications, Priahina said.

Soviet National Television has traditionally controlled the production of television programming and the Ministry of Communications has controlled the broadcasting or transmission of signals through towers or satellites, said Michael Taratuta, San Francisco bureau chief for Soviet National Television.

The equipment provided by the Adventists would give the Ministry of Communications the ability to produce as well as broadcast television programs.

Aufderhar said the Soviets are bartering for equipment that is difficult for them to acquire because they lack hard currency. He said the amount of money involved is “similar to what we would pay for air time here in the United States, only we’re presenting it all up front.”

Vandeman said it is important to the Soviets that Adventism is an established denomination in their country. He said the same “It Is Written” programs produced in Thousand Oaks will be dubbed into Russian at an Adventist facility in the Soviet city of Tula, which has a large Adventist community.

The program, which began in 1956, airs in about 40 markets throughout the United States and usually ranks in the top 15 of all religious broadcasts, according to the Nielsen and Arbitron ratings.

“It Is Written” has a semi-documentary style. The program uses news footage, scenes from dramatic productions and other video intercut with shots of Vandeman in the studio or on location.