[absturgill]

http://www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Sate ... ws!archive

By Ron Brown:

Liberty University has agreed to buy a Roanoke-based television station.

The school’s board of trustees authorized the $6 million purchase of financially troubled WDRL-TV at the board’s annual meeting earlier this month.

The sale is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and the Federal Communications Commission.

LU hopes to get those approvals and close on the sale within 90 days.

WDRL-TV, which broadcasts on open air Channel 24, is a full-power station that reaches most of the Roanoke-Lynchburg-Danville television market.

LU plans to use the television station to promote the university and televise the school’s religious and sporting events.

The station will also carry Sunday services from Thomas Road Baptist Church.

It will also televise shows from nationally known pastors, such as the Rev. Charles Stanley and the late Rev. Adrian Rogers.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, LU’s chancellor, said the lineup of preachers will be similar to those who broadcast on the ministries’ radio station, WRVL-FM.

“Our goal is to cover every home 24/7 by radio and television,” he said.

Initially, the station’s studio will remain in Roanoke, where its operation will be managed by Mel Eleazer, the station’s current owner.

Eventually, the station’s headquarters will be moved to Lynchburg, Falwell said.

Ron Godwin, LU’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, will be given oversight of the station.

“Liberty wanted the station as a recruiting tool,” Falwell said. “We wanted to give the university a higher profile in Central Virginia and beyond.”

As a full power station, WDRL-TV qualifies for a “must carry” status with cable television companies throughout the region. The university already has a low power station that operates under the call letters of WTLU-TV.

Falwell said the programming on WDRL-TV will be different from the programming on WTLU-TV, which reaches about four counties.

“We felt a full power station was necessary to take Liberty to where we want it to go,” Falwell said. “We will have the engineers and technical people necessary to run a full power station.”

He said the university will be willing to invest the money required to ready the station for a conversion to digital television by February 2009 as required by the FCC.

“As soon as we have control, we will make any improvements that need to be made,” Falwell said. “We want to make sure that WDRL covers every house, every mountain top and every valley.”

Falwell said the station will be able to reach about 1 million people and will have a footprint similar to all the other major television stations in the Roanoke-Lynchburg-Danville market.

Falwell said he plans for the staff of WDRL-TV to work in conjunction with the staff at Liberty Broadcasting Network in developing original programming.

“Our staff here, our engineers, our production people, our writers will be working in tandem with the station’s staff,” he said.

[thepostman]

I heard about this a couple weeks ago and really have no idea what the point is...they already do nothing with the Liberty Channel...now they are going to do nothing with another channel.....fantastic

[Flamesfanva]

Perhaps they will broadcast some Flames Sports. I have Directv and they don't carry the Liberty channel, but will have to carry this station.

[PeterParker]

They'll just throw up the footage from the 80's and a license a few "McGhee & Me" episodes and expect Millenials (high school students) to be on the edge of their seats to come to LU when they see the high hair of the students sitting in the audiences.

Buying the station isn't a bad idea per se if they can actually get some quality stuff on there about the university along with some non-campy quality programming. The stuff about the university has to highlight it as a whole and as it is today, not with footage from the 80's. For quality programming, several other christian universities are making strides, Biola University and Asuza Pacific University, are having influence in a professional paradigm.


If they want to use it as a marketing tool, perhaps they could put on a program that highlights the plans for the future of the university to get the ideas out there (engineering program, etc.) along with some athletic specific programming. I know down in the 757 they show the Hokies Hour or something like that which highlights the Hokies programs, interviews with coaches, one on one interviews with players, etc. It really gives one an inside glimpse of the program, the type of people, et al. Getting the people out before the public through a medium such as that is what will sell Liberty to others.


As I've posted before, it's all about the people when one comes to LU--that's what keeps people at LU, not love of rules as some have suggested, not the big personalities in the LU community; it all comes back to the types of people you meet there--that's one of the major selling points of the university. However, the public at large filters everything LU through their perception of JF (fairly or unfairly); opening up the campus from the ground level to the public so to speak would serve as a good ambassador that would serve to build/foster an affinity between the public and LU.


Additionally, there's an interesting phenomenon that exists with sports team affinity; for instance I know people who are huge, die hard fans of teams such as Notre Dame, obviously known to everyone as a Catholic institution. These particular fans are Protestant Christians so by default their theology directly conflicts with Catholic dogma; however, they are still true blue Fighting Irish fans through and through not to mention the people who aren't religious who are huge Irish fans. So, to offer a point of discussion: in theory, shouldn't LU eventually be the beneficiary of the same phenomenon?

[PeterParker]

Here are some examples of how some other Christian colleges are engaging the culture through the renewed Christian renaissance in thought & aesthetics as part of the broader christian intellectual renaissance to find the optimal balance between faith & reason. (Checkout the Victorian Age section of your English survey textbooks to see how the Christian viewpoint/ideology fared in trying to bridge the two back then.)


Biola University


1. http://www.mcom.biola.edu/bmc/ Biola Media Conference

The Biola Media Conference celebrates 11 years of advancing the integration of faith and the arts. It brings together influential media leaders with those who can benefit from their collective, Christian wisdom, for a day of education, inspiration and networking.

On April 29, 2006, come learn and interact with top industry pro's from Film, TV, Radio, PR and Journalism. Secure the information, inspiration, and contacts that will prove invaluable to your faith and your future from those who have stepped out of the closet to leverage this unprecedented opportunity in Hollywood.

2. http://www.biola.edu/undergrad/academic ... _radio.cfm

In addition to our curriculum, the department has several outstanding distinctives:

>Students have 24-hour access to the Production Center. This 5,000 square foot facility features a sound stage, recording room, and over a dozen audio and video editing facilities.

>Our equipment room is affectionately known as the ER. There are over 1,000 items available for checkout, including cameras, microphones, lighting instruments and supporting pieces.

>The Studio Task Force is a group of over 200 Christian media professionals who support the FTR program. They are invested in training and equipping the next generation of faith-fueled writers, directors, producers and crew. This is accomplished through classroom teaching, mentoring, internships, job contacts, and the donation of almost 1.5 million dollars toward department development.

3. http://www.biola.edu/narnia/story.html

Mark Joseph, of MJM Entertainment who worked as a consultant for 4 1/2 years for Walden Media, and Ned Lott, Senior Manager of Disney Character Voices, are two Biola alumni that have played roles in the development and production of the Narnia film. An early inspiration for this exciting new film was born out of a key meeting at the Biola Media Conference.

Biola’s personal relationship with Mark Joseph and The Chronicles of Narnia began when Biola students in a Principles of Advertising class were commissioned by Motive Marketing (the Passion of the Christ) and Walden Media to develop marketing strategies for the Narnia films as a class assignment. The students’ hands-on learning influenced a decision to give Biola the opportunity to host this exclusive premiere, an offer Integrated Marketing Communications could not pass up...

...The Biola Film/Television/Radio/Journalism department is responsible for this recent emergence of Biola graduates making their mark in the film industry. The program boasts a strong faculty who are continuing to stay active in the industry and immediate student access to a wide range of film equipment, allowing students hands-on experience in filmmaking—a rarity for many other film schools.

4. http://www.biola.edu/news/articles/0511 ... onthly.cfm

Article about

Then, after 9/11, the industry started to change. Studio heads began asking for movies that were "spiritual" even if not explicitly religious. Around this time the Act One faculty started coming out of the closet, as Nicolosi puts it. Ralph Winter, the producer of X-Men and Fantastic Four, and Tom Shadyac, the producer of Bruce Almighty and Patch Adams, began speaking at the handful of new Christian film festivals. Writers on popular TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed began to feel comfortable casually mentioning to colleagues that they were going to church. They were the second wave.

Daniel Roemer's generation makes up the third. "They have no interest in this conversation" about how one reconciles one's Christianity with Hollywood, Nicolosi told me. "They think it's like asking why a Latino or a gay person should be in Hollywood." You can see the shape of this emerging generation of Christians in the hundreds of applicants to Act One: a pastor's wife and former teen country singer who wants to write "culture shaping, commercially successful TV shows and films"; an evangelical marooned at Harvard; a woman who used to work in the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. This generation grew up worshipping God and Quentin Tarantino (the latter sometimes secretly). They are the cinematic wing of what the sociologist Alan Wolfe calls the "opening of the evangelical mind," a cultural renaissance among conservative Christians. Though their parents may have taught them to take refuge in a parallel Christian subculture, the movies these people found in Christian bookstores bored and embarrassed them. To be accepted at Act One you have to believe that Jesus is a real presence in your life. But the worst insult you can deliver there is to say that a movie reminds you of such notoriously low-budget Christian schlock as the Left Behind series and The Omega Code, or that the dialogue sounds like "Christianese."

Many members of this generation are ahead of the broader evangelical culture. But already Christian institutions are popping up to support them. Biola once forbade its students from watching films of any kind; now it has a film department, as does Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical school just outside Pasadena. In 2002 Pat Robertson's Regent University opened a performing-arts center with film and animation studios, two screening theaters, and a back lot. Two years later George Barna, a respected evangelical pollster and researcher, had a revelation: he decided that film had more influence on parishioners than church, and he started Barna Films, an arm of his Christian media company. Philip Anschutz, a devout Christian and the billionaire founder of Qwest Communications, founded the Anschutz Film Group last year; it includes Walden Media, Disney's partner in The Chronicles of Narnia. (Anschutz produced last year's Oscar-winning Ray, in which he insisted on excising Ray Charles's cursing and womanizing.) Christians can now choose from among a dozen Hollywood prayer groups, including the Hollywood Prayer Network, dedicated to building "an army of talented professionals to change Hollywood from the inside out."

5. http://www.infuzemag.com/staff/leo/arch ... ans_1.html

Late last year I was interviewed by a wonderful reporter named Hanna Rosin for an article in the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly called "Can Jesus Save Hollywood?"; I'm happy to report that her article was just one of a number of positive articles in the last year that covered Christians in Hollywood. There are so many great things happening out here and you can clearly see the results on celluloid and TV land. Sure, the box-office is barely ahead of last year, but you know what's happening? The films that are doing well are either PG or PG-13, animated films, family comedies, fantasy and comic book films for tiny Timmy and Gammy and Pappy. Narnia was the number one film of the Christmas season, slightly edging out Harry Potter!

Do you think somehow Christians might be having an effect? Do you see all the Christian characters and Christian themes incorporated in so many TV shows? Do you hear Christian bands in many of the soundtracks? Not convinced? How about some evidence? I'm involved with the Biola Media Conference, an annual get together of Christians in the media and entertainment. On April 29, why don't you come down to Southern California to join us and see how you can be part of what my friend Craig Detweiler dubbed, "The New Christian Renaissance!"

[Cider Jim]

I'll miss seeing the ocassional Marshall football game or Oriole baseball game on the old WDRL, but with this new exposure, maybe we can bring back the LU Coaches' Show that we used to have and interview Rocco and our unnamed basketball coach when their sports are in season.

[BJWilliams]

Well heck, now we can put other sports on TV now (like football, baseball and softball) (Im still trying to talk Dr Kerr into the idea of a band reality show)

[El Scorcho]

While I like the idea of LU sports being on TV, when it's just local, I have to wonder if it'll hurt more than it will help. We want people to come out to the games, but why would they come out when they can just watch them at home...on their couch...with an adult beverage?

I mean, I understand that it won't keep everyone away and that it's all good if people are watching, but I just hope it doesn't hinder our efforts to get attendance up.

[Fumblerooskies]

I remember when a road sign tycoon bought a local Atlanta UHF channel...
...WTTC channel 17. He used it to market his product...The Atlanta Braves. Some 30 years later, TBS is firmly entrenched as an entertainment network.

Why not a Christian Super-Station?

[bigsmooth]

this is good news i think. many in the roanoke and new river valley still do not know as much about liberty as we think. this is great for athletics IMO.

[Cider Jim]

And it's bound to help with local recruiting if grandmas in Roanoke & Danville can't make it out to the game, they can watch their athletic grandchilden on TV. Plus, if LU ends up hosting next year's BSC Quiz Bowl tournament, that would be some quality Saturday morning programing.

[SuperJon]

We need a weekly LU tv show ran by the students that talks about what's going on on campus.

[alabama24]

While I like the idea of LU sports being on TV, when it's just local, I have to wonder if it'll hurt more than it will help. We want people to come out to the games, but why would they come out when they can just watch them at home...on their couch...with an adult beverage?

I mean, I understand that it won't keep everyone away and that it's all good if people are watching, but I just hope it doesn't hinder our efforts to get attendance up.

I have never understood the argument that TV coverage discourages attendance. I grew up in Seattle and back when the Seahawks struggled to draw a crowd the home games were not televised. The two main reasons for not drawing a crowd are:

1) Lack of Fan support
2) Losing

It has always been my belief that fan support is much more important than the win-loss record. Look at CUBS fans. They turn out win or lose. In seattle for so many years when the seahawks were losing - the Mariner’s were losing too. But they had a good turn out. And they had fan support and television coverage helped to create that support.

Local coverage can only help LU athletics in my humble opinion.

[Ed Dantes]

I remember when a road sign tycoon bought a local Atlanta UHF channel...
...WTTC channel 17. He used it to market his product...The Atlanta Braves. Some 30 years later, TBS is firmly entrenched as an entertainment network.

Why not a Christian Super-Station?

coz we don't have the Atlanta Braves.

[Sly Fox]

We probably could land Sid Bream to do Flames commercials like he did for the Brave son TBS.

[BJWilliams]

Hey, I say give it a shot. Not everybody can make it to the games, so now we can bring LU athletics to a larger audience. I mean the last football home game we had on TV was one of the greatest games in LU history. The baseball and softball teams are finding success, and do I even need to mention what track and field is doing? What about Soccer? I mean that UNC-LU game from last fall would have made for great television.

[PAmedic]

I have a great idea for a weekly one-hour show:

ALUMNI CORNER, this week: SPECIAL GUEST- PAmedic

"Please stand up and introduce yourself, sir"

"I am standing up "

(hahahahahahahaha......................SHADDUP!)

[Sly Fox]

I guess if LU were looking for an alum with a Broadcast Management degree and twenty years of experience to come run the place, I have a feeling that person could be found.

[TallyW]

Who do we need to petition... I think we have a few hundred on here who could get the ball rolling Sly...

[thesportscritic]

I have a great idea for a weekly one-hour show:

ALUMNI CORNER, this week: SPECIAL GUEST- PAmedic

"Please stand up and introduce yourself, sir"

"I am standing up "

(hahahahahahahaha......................SHADDUP!)

and anybody can barely see you on TV standing up because you are a midget haha.

[PAmedic]

yes sweetheart, that was the joke.

you now owe me dinner as well

this oughta work out good- by my count thats at least 2 meals and a batch of cookies when I get down there.

[thepostman]

I guess if LU were looking for an alum with a Broadcast Management degree and twenty years of experience to come run the place, I have a feeling that person could be found.

seriously man...thats actually a good idea...joke or not....maybe some guys on here that actually work for the right people could get that ball rolling....the Flames Television Network.....

[thesportscritic]

yes sweetheart, that was the joke.

you now owe me dinner as well

this oughta work out good- by my count thats at least 2 meals and a batch of cookies when I get down there.

indeed. when are you going to be down here?

[bigsmooth]

agreed. sly is our man! then we get SCAR to expand his broadcasting career too!

[bigsmooth]

from the roanoke fishwrap:

Liberty U. seeks to buy WDRL-TV
The Roanoke-Lynchburg station would promote the school's activities, the Rev. Jerry Falwell said.
Pamela J. Podger

Liberty University hopes to extend its regional influence with the purchase of a Roanoke-Lynchburg television station that could help evangelist Jerry Falwell promote the school's sporting and religious events.

The possible sale of WDRL-TV, an independent station aired on Channel 24, requires approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and the Federal Communications Commission. Liberty has offered roughly $6 million for the station, said Jerry Falwell Jr., vice chancellor and general counsel for the university.

University officials are confident they'll get formal approval from the FCC in about 90 days. In the meantime, Liberty will operate the station under a temporary broadcasting agreement.

"We will use the station to recruit students and make the local public more aware of events at LU," the Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr. said in an e-mail Monday. "Liberty University has owned a low-powered station in Lynchburg for many years but has always sought a full-power station that must be carried by all cable systems in the market. WDRL accomplishes that objective."

If the new ownership is approved, Falwell said he expects to broadcast Sunday services from Thomas Road Baptist Church and televise shows from prominent pastors. University officials said shows will be "similar ... but more varied" to current programs on LU's ministries' radio station, WRVL-FM, and the low-powered WTLU-TV.

Falwell indicated that the Roanoke station would boost Liberty's recruiting, campus events and sports coverage.

"More established schools are well covered in the broadcast media," he said. "LU is just trying to close the gap a little."

Currently, the Roanoke station offers sports coverage and reruns of general interest shows including "Mad About You" and "The Nanny."

Melvin Eleazer, who has owned WDRL-TV for about 13 years, said he was pleased by the March 5 offer by his "friend," Falwell. He said the former UPN station became an independent station in September 2006. Eleazer said he'll initially remain at the Roanoke station.

"I'll follow whatever he [Falwell] wants to do, that is his decision," Eleazer said. "I may remain on for a few years or a couple of months, I haven't decided."

The station reaches about 445,840 television households in the Roanoke-Lynchburg-Danville areas.

Nielsen Media Research ranks the Roanoke metro area 68th out of 210 markets, just behind Wichita, Kan., and nudging ahead of Green Bay, Wis., according to Laura James, vice president of client communications.

Communications lawyer George Borsari, of the Washington firm Borsari & Paxson that represents WDRL, said he knows of no opposition to the possible change in ownership.

"The FCC must approve the transaction," Borsari said. "Nothing can be done in terms of the sale until the FCC has had a chance to review and approve it."

University officials said studios would be maintained in Danville, as required by the FCC, and in Lynchburg.

While lawyers say WDRL is profitable, the station in July filed for debt relief under Chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Western District of Virginia, in Danville.

A hearing on the bankruptcy issue in Danville is scheduled for Wednesday, said lawyer Howard Beck Jr.

Liberty intends to purchase all the station's assets and the license to transmit analog and digital television signals currently held by MNE Broadcasting, according to court records.

University officials plan to eventually upgrade to a digital signal by 2009, as required by the FCC.