ITV has recently confirmed that it will be cutting its religious broadcasts on television to just 1 hour a year due to economic issues and alleged lack of interest from the general public. Channel 4 has also decided not to re appoint a commissioning editor for religion within the Specialist Factual team despite protests from many Christians nationwide.
Polls show that 70% of the British public have a faith and of those people, 7 out of 10 of them have a Christian faith. Similarly, over 1.7 million Christian viewers watch religious television on a monthly basis and fully support religious broadcasting. Senior clergy, including Nigel Holmes from the Diocese of Carlisle, told the Telegraph that Channel 4’s actions were treating Christianity as a ‘rare species’.
The cuts from Channel 4 have left the BBC as the only significant source of Christian television with 110 hours of broadcasting time a year. We thank God for the continuing rise of Christian TV and Radio Channels and will lobby for more dedicated time on ’mainstream TV’ to reflect the great Christian heritage of our nation.
It is said that the main difficulty for many channels is that showing religious programmes on television is becoming ‘commercially unstable’ and producers cannot afford to continue broadcasting due to lack of support and finance. Dawn Airey, chair of 5, wrote to Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, the Bishop of Manchester saying that previous programmes with religious themes did not pull a large enough audience.’
ITV’s chief executive John Cresswell justified the company’s actions by telling the Telegraph he has to focus primarily on programmes that are would provide an income for the company and attract large audiences.
Andrea Minichiello Williams, Director of Christian Concern for our Nation said ‘These cuts show that Christianity is subtly being squeezed out of the media. However I firmly believe it is our job not to let that happen in order to keep Christianity in the public eye.’