Monitoring Group Finds TV Still Ignores Religion : Entertainment: Portrayals of believers are more positive, but shows still don’t reflect the role of religion in the lives of Americans, study says.

Network television’s treatment of religion in its prime-time entertainment programming improved in 1994 but Hollywood continued to mostly ignore the subject, according to a study released Thursday.

While negative depictions of religion or those who are religious outnumbered positive portrayals by about two to one in 1993, those numbers were reversed in 1994, according to the second annual Media Research Center study documenting prime-time TV’s treatment of the subject.

And the number of portrayals of religion in prime time last year more than doubled from 1993.

But the numbers still don’t reflect the role of religion in the lives of Americans, said L. Brent Bozell III, chairman of the Alexandria, Va.-based media monitoring group that said it watched all of the first-run prime-time broadcasts by CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox last year.

“National polls show that 90% of the American people believe in God, 80% made prayer a regular part of their lives and almost half of all Americans go to church or synagogue at least twice a month,” Bozell said. “But you would hardly know religion existed in American life by watching our national networks.”

The Media Research Center, a conservative organization that operates on an annual budget of $3.2 million drawn from individuals and subscriptions to several watchdog publications, said it watched more than 1,700 hours of programming to draw its conclusions.

Researchers found 253 instances where religion was broached--after finding only 116 in slightly fewer hours of 1993 programming.

“Encouraging, but doubling an insignificantly small number leaves you with a number that’s still pretty small,” Bozell said. “Those figures leave us with an average of just over one religious depiction for every seven hours of prime-time programming.”

The group concluded that shows worthy of special praise for their depiction of religion were CBS’ “Touched by an Angel” and “Christy,” ABC’s “Thunder Alley” and NBC’s “L.A. Law” and “Homicide: Life on the Street.”

Although no 1994 series made religion-bashing a habit, NBC’s “The John Larroquette Show” was cited as “the program perhaps most offensive to believers.”

Last week, the Media Research Center released another study in which it concluded that network news’ coverage of religion, which it had called meager in 1993, had decreased in 1994.

“Network news . . . continues to operate on the false and ignorant premise that good news is no news, even if it affects the overwhelming majority of Americans in a positive way,” Bozell said.