Now Sunrise Service May Not Be Televised at All

The worldwide Trinity Broadcasting Network’s abrupt withdrawal from next month’s Easter pageant at the Hollywood Bowl means there will probably be no televised coverage of the annual sunrise service, event planners conceded Wednesday.

There is not enough time now to arrange for even a local broadcast, said leaders of Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service Inc., which regained control over the pageant.

Orange County-based TBN said late Tuesday that it was scrapping its plans to produce the March 31 service and televise it internationally. TBN officials cited bad publicity from an ongoing dispute with its longtime sponsor, the nonprofit Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service Inc., as the reason for the pullout.

TBN won rights to stage the pageant when it beat out the civic group in a controversial Jan. 25 coin toss conducted by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn., which manages the Bowl for Los Angeles County.

The coin toss angered the sunrise-service group, which contends its predecessors built the Hollywood Bowl and later turned it over to the county in exchange for permission to use it annually for Easter services. When the group announced its intention to file a lawsuit Wednesday, aimed at regaining Easter use of the Bowl, TBN officials stepped aside.

In a letter to the Philharmonic association, TBN President Paul F. Crouch said he had no desire to become “an unwilling victim of false accusations, lascivious innuendo and the whirlwind of negative reporting in the media” that has accompanied the dispute in recent weeks.

The sunrise-service group’s plan to file a lawsuit confronted TBN with “two choices: fight back hard or turn the other cheek,” said network spokesman Colby May in an official statement.

“It has chosen the latter . . . in the hope that no one is distracted from the true meaning of Easter: salvation, hope and eternal life through the loving sacrifice of Christ Jesus on the cross for all of us,” May said.

Philharmonic association officials immediately reassigned the Easter service to Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service Inc.

On Wednesday, leaders of the group were scrambling to resume preparing for this year’s pageant. They said they will announce its guest lineup on Friday.

In the meantime, the sunrise-service group is working to make up the about $35,000 shortfall caused when fund-raising efforts were delayed because of the fight with TBN, group president Norma Foster said.

Foster pledged that this year’s program will go on just like it has in past years--except for the television coverage.

“A broadcast will be very difficult at this point. You need three months just to get a listing in the TV Guide,” Foster said.

Waivers would have to be negotiated with various broadcast unions and “some station would have to take away two hours of commercial time they have already sold.”

She said the broadcast picture could improve if a television company with the ability to turn things around quickly somehow materializes.

Could that be TBN? Considered the world’s largest religious broadcaster with 2,500 affiliates in about 100 countries connected by satellite, the network often airs programming produced by others.

TBN’s May characterized the absence of a televised sunrise service this year as “the strangest irony I can imagine.” But he said he cannot imagine TBN stepping in now to bail out Foster’s group.

Foster, meantime, said her organization plans to “stand guard at the gate” to prevent TBN from taking over the service next year.