Ex-TV evangelist buys cable network

The son of famed Orange County television evangelist Robert H. Schuller said Tuesday he had acquired cable network AmericanLife TV from the Unification Church in partnership with a private equity fund that invests in Christian media firms.

The deal comes seven months after the older Rev. Schuller said he was removing his son, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, as the only preacher of “The Hour of Power” three years after turning the long-running Christian television program over to him.

In December the younger Schuller resigned as senior pastor at the Crystal Cathedral, the Garden Grove church founded by his father, and said he planned to open his own ministry.

Under the partnership with Dallas-based Comstar Media Fund to acquire AmericanLife, the younger Schuller said he would be the network’s chairman and would jointly oversee it with Comstar Chief Executive Chris Wyatt.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. But Wyatt said the network was worth $100 million in 2000, when it was half its current size. The Dallas-based network has nearly 13 million subscribers and a library of more than 700 hours of programming, he said.

The younger Schuller said he would appear in a weekly series on AmericanLife starting in September.

Wyatt said the network’s programming would be family-friendly but not religious. AmericanLife carries mostly decades-old reruns designed to attract Baby Boomer viewers.

Schuller’s father said in a statement that he wished his son well despite their split.