Interfaith Networks Agree to Share a Cable TV Channel

Two interfaith cable TV networks are joining forces to offer something that they say is lacking in the world of television--realistic depictions of American life.

Both use everything from dramas to documentaries to stress rudiments of everyday living, its problems, perils, opportunities, failures, strengths and potentialities.

“Most TV networks are out of touch with where American people are and what we do is bring that reality into the homes of viewers,” said Nelson Price, president of VISN, the Vision Interfaith Satellite Network, which is owned by a coalition of 54 faith groups.

VISN and another religiously based network--the American Christian Television System (ACTS)--last week signed an agreement to share a 24-hour channel.

This will greatly expand their reach to about 20 million households and a projected accessible audience of 50 million, making it the biggest, broadly diversified faith and values TV operation.

“We try to deal with life as it really is, including its spiritual side, which hardly gets noticed on network television,” said Richard McCartney, executive vice president of the denominational agency that owns ACTS.

“Religion is a regular part of ordinary American life instead of a sideshow, as most networks treat it when they do at all,” he said. “With us, you won’t see ministers and priests typified as wimps but as real people.”

Even on many ostensibly religious televangelist shows, “religion is distorted” and its image harmed, he said in an interview from ACTS headquarters in Ft. Worth, Tex.

He said the objective is to reflect “the full dimensions of spiritual values” and ethics in ordinary life, along with the difficulties, questions, sorrows and joys that people face.

For the new partnership, which goes into effect Oct. 1, both participants uphold some distinctive guidelines--no on-air fund solicitation, no proselytizing and no maligning of other faiths.

To be called VISN-ACTS, the Faith and Values Channel, it will not be a merger of the two, but shared time on one channel. VISN will present 16 hours of programming each day, and ACTS will offer eight hours.

Although the two networks will maintain their own identities and program resources, the new arrangement calls for implementing some close cooperation.

“It will mean a considerable amount of coordination,” McCartney said.

This will involve not only program scheduling but a joint uplink and sales of advertising for which both will be served by VISN’s agency, VISN Group Inc.

In the past, some rivalry existed between the two networks as they competed for local channel carriage. This sometimes resulted in neither being carried to avoid offending religious groups involved on both sides.

“We were competitors in the sense that cable operators usually don’t have space for both networks and had to make a choice,” Price said. “Now we’re joining forces to bring communities one broad-based channel.”

VISN, reaching nearly 13 million households on 712 cable systems, had gained strong coverage in the Northeast, the northern tier of central states and Western states.

ACTS, reaching 8.2 million households through 604 cable systems, has been concentrated mainly in the South and Southwest.

The combination extends both nationally.

The increased scope and audience accessed, expected to climb above 25 million households in a year, also is expected to attract more advertisers concerned for family and values.

“Now we’ll have the numbers to interest them,” Price said. He noted that criteria for advertising insist it be in good taste for products of solid value. Alcohol and tobacco are excluded.

VISN, launched in 1988, represents mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish and evangelical traditions. Ecumenical in approach, it carries a wide variety of programs--drama, call-in shows, documentaries, town hall-type sessions, comedy, worship and music.

ACTS, started in 1984 by the nation’s largest Protestant organization, Southern Baptists, also features productions of other denominations, Catholic and Protestant. It specializes in family-oriented, inspirational, informational and entertainment programming, some with an evangelical flavor.