A New Network Hopes Virtue Has Its Own Ratings Rewards

Too much sex. Too much violence. Television for years has suffered the slings and arrows of critics who decry what they see as the medium’s descent into the prurient.

But starting Monday, Lowell “Bud” Paxson, multimillionaire broadcasting mogul and born-again Christian, plans to throw a little virtue into the TV mix.

With a lineup of about 80 stations that few people have ever knowingly tuned in before and a programming plan packed with reruns of shows most have seen many times before, Pax TV, owned and operated by Florida-based Paxson Communications Corp., launches as the seventh national broadcast network.

Except that its top executive doesn’t want it to be anything like any of the other networks. It is, he maintains, the anti-network.

“The other networks have gone way too far in the direction of having to tell stories that use sexuality and violence,” said Jeff Sagansky, a former president of CBS Entertainment who is now president of Pax TV. “They aren’t really in the business anymore of creating programming for families. So much of what they do is filled with sexual titillation in an effort to grab the 18-to-34 demographic, and that’s not a good thing for anyone--and it especially has a terribly destructive influence on children.”

So Pax TV promises to be a “safe environment” for viewers of all ages. “We do think that it is the only family programming service out there--family defined [as] something both parents and their kids can enjoy--and that is what will distinguish us not only from all the other networks but from all the cable outlets as well,” he said.

Yet most of Pax TV’s daily lineup comes from the very networks Sagansky criticizes. Its prime-time weekday lineup consists of reruns of the dramas “Touched by an Angel,” “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” and “Diagnosis Murder,” two of which are still on the air at CBS and all of which were developed when Sagansky was in charge there.

The network will also carry reruns of such former network shows as “The Father Dowling Mysteries,” “Highway to Heaven,” “Eight Is Enough,” “Family,” “Barnaby Jones” and “Bonanza” and has bought the future rights to air reruns of CBS’ “Promised Land” and WB’s “Seventh Heaven.”

“The networks for the most part are trying to program their shows for considerably younger viewers, because they really don’t feel that there is any such thing as family programming,” Sagansky said. “Parents and kids don’t watch TV together, they claim. Everyone is in their separate room with their separate TVs watching different shows. And then every time one of these family shows does come on and succeeds, they say it’s just a fluke. But it isn’t a fluke. This is what network television was always based on--programming for entire families--and I believe that is still as applicable as ever.”

Pax TV also will carry original programming, including “Flipper: The New Adventure,” a remake of the 1964-68 TV series; an afternoon magazine show for women, “Woman’s Day”; another afternoon information show called “Great Day America”; and children’s programming on weekend mornings.

And coming in November is a new drama, “Little Men,” based on the book by Louisa May Alcott about a frontier woman who runs a boarding school for boys.

Skeptics question the viability of Pax TV’s programming strategy, noting first that many of the reruns it is carrying appeal to an older demographic that is not what most advertisers are looking for, and second that there already are other channels that specialize in family programming, such as the Disney Channel, Fox Family Channel and Nickelodeon.

“We have bought all these programs exclusively,” Sagansky countered. “This is the only place to find ‘Touched by an Angel’ each night. And those other channels really are for kids. They are aiming for niche audiences of kids or teens. We are going for the biggest audience available: everyone.”

But perhaps the biggest problem Pax TV faces is simply getting viewers to find it on the dial. Paxson’s company owns more than 80 television stations across the country, but most are obscure UHF stations that have never before had any sort of identity. Until Monday, these stations, including KPXN-TV Channel 30 in Southern California, are showing mostly wall-to-wall infomercials.

Undeniably, in the age of remote control and channel surfing, this sort of obscurity and high-numbered channel position is less of a problem than it might have been 15 years ago, but Sagansky conceded that it will take about a year for viewers to accustom themselves to tuning in the Pax TV stations. The network plans to spend $25 million in promotion and advertising over the next few months to help speed that process along.

Because the network owns all its own stations and thus will benefit from the sale of local and national commercial time, Pax TV can be profitable by averaging just 1% of the audience, Sagansky said. But even that might be asking a lot considering that very few of the biggest cable channels achieve even that low mark. Sagansky expects to grab that sized audience by the end of the first year. In addition, the network will still sell infomercials throughout the wee hours of the night and much of each morning.

Despite Paxson’s religious beliefs--the founder of the Home Shopping Network became a born-again Christian after his wife left him in 1986--Sagansky said the network will not be used as a pulpit.

“We are nondenominational, but we won’t shy away from shows that have spiritual content that people of all faiths can embrace,” he said. “In fact, I hope we have a spiritual dimension in a lot of our programming. As a network programmer, the one thing you hear over and over is, ‘Don’t do shows about politics or spirituality.’ I think that is wrong. If you ask people what are the two most important things in their life, they’ll say, ‘No. 1, family, and No. 2, spirituality.’ There’s no reason to be afraid to give them exactly that.”