any stations in your area running the 700 Club telethon?

[rgseark2009]

Why on earth would any station run a telethon for that crooked bastard Pat Robertson? If it is for a worthwhile cause, couldn't he just open up a few of his diamond mines and take it out of there?

Say it ain't so...Former liquor-supply officer Pat and blood diamonds? Never underestimate the power of past-their prime gospel-huxters.

 

[nomadcowatbk]

I still believe contracts can be broken. ABC Family should not be hamstrung by this old man. He needs to leave the stage pronto and free the channel from his bondage. Let ABC choose to sell time to him and not the other way around. Of course, if "Pat" really wanted to control his programming he would have never sold the Family Channel in the first place.

What about this happening: Disney selling ABC Family's current space to CBN, and then moving ABC Family's programming -- sans The 700 Club -- to what is now SoapNet? Could that work?

The only out at this point is waiting a few more years until the quiet sign off of ABC Family's analog feed, and then they can do what they want. From what I have read in the past, since the HD feed is just a whole other channel in technicality, it really isn't under the Robertson covenant, but just for simplicity's sake is a simulcast now, including the 700. Now that ABC/Disney is getting many of their programming agreements for the next ten years firmed up on many providers, once they take off the analog/4:3 'original' feed when HD penetration reaches a certain number (this probably counts both actual HD homes and homes using HD cable/sat boxes in analog 4:3 mode), Disney is free to let the 700/CBN go and grab those hours for themselves.

As for Soapnet; forget it. Soapnet isn't even in many of the new ABC/Disney cable carriage agreements and is probably gone by the end of 2014 at the latest.

Disney has already stopped the analog feeds of the ESPN family, but Pat might pay them enough to keep him on there if he pays them more than the revenue some rerun could generate in the morning and late night when he's on that channel. The current deal also required them to keep "family" in the channel name. Disney had wanted to change the name of the channel to XYZ but the deal wouldn't let them. Can they when they finally shut off the analog feed. Pat was able to get a large amount of $ when he sold it to Rupert Murdoch because of its channel placement despite its over 50 demographics.

 

[umfan]

WMYD (Channel 20) in Detroit, MyNetwork TV, is carrying this.

 

[Jul]

WPSG 57 will air the broadcast from 4-6 PM

 

[ding12]

I still believe contracts can be broken. ABC Family should not be hamstrung by this old man. He needs to leave the stage pronto and free the channel from his bondage. Let ABC choose to sell time to him and not the other way around. Of course, if "Pat" really wanted to control his programming he would have never sold the Family Channel in the first place.

What about this happening: Disney selling ABC Family's current space to CBN, and then moving ABC Family's programming -- sans The 700 Club -- to what is now SoapNet? Could that work?

The only out at this point is waiting a few more years until the quiet sign off of ABC Family's analog feed, and then they can do what they want. From what I have read in the past, since the HD feed is just a whole other channel in technicality, it really isn't under the Robertson covenant, but just for simplicity's sake is a simulcast now, including the 700. Now that ABC/Disney is getting many of their programming agreements for the next ten years firmed up on many providers, once they take off the analog/4:3 'original' feed when HD penetration reaches a certain number (this probably counts both actual HD homes and homes using HD cable/sat boxes in analog 4:3 mode), Disney is free to let the 700/CBN go and grab those hours for themselves.

As for Soapnet; forget it. Soapnet isn't even in many of the new ABC/Disney cable carriage agreements and is probably gone by the end of 2014 at the latest.

ABC Family HD is currently airing The 700 Club. If it is a whole other channel, wouldn't ABC not air it on there given the choice?

I'd think it'd be quite difficult for ABC to drop it from the HD feed, unrelated to the cease of SD feed, at this point.

I still believe contracts can be broken.

Contracts can be broken, but do they want to pay the litigation fees when they are sued?

Yeah, maybe it should have kept SoapNet and converted it to a basic channel with General Hospital same day episodes, but otherwise the family programming from ABC Family and SoapNet, and ceased ABC Family or sold it at a loss (tax writeoff) to CBN, and eventually negotiate with providers so that SoapNet (or whatever the new name would be) would to have the same number of HH that ABC Family had.

 

[FreddyE1977]

Why on earth would any station run a telethon for that crooked bastard Pat Robertson? If it is for a worthwhile cause, couldn't he just open up a few of his diamond mines and take it out of there?

Say it ain't so...Former liquor-supply officer Pat and blood diamonds? Never underestimate the power of past-their prime gospel-huxters.

I'll be slightly more charitable and say that Robertson's family really needs to sit him down and force the issue of retirement.
He's been going senile for a number of years IMO. It's at a point where he is saying really weird stuff on-air on nearly a
monthly basis. His family should care enough to want to get him off of there and spare himself further embarrassment.

 

[azumanga]

The current deal also required them to keep "family" in the channel name. Disney had wanted to change the name of the channel to XYZ but the deal wouldn't let them.

These days, if they were allowed to change their name, they would be "ABC Spark", which is practically the Canadian version of ABC Family, but without the Pat Robertson stigma:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_Spark

ABC Family HD is currently airing The 700 Club. If it is a whole other channel, wouldn't ABC not air it on there given the choice?

It is common practice for both SD and HD versions of a cable channel to carry the same programming, regardless of whether or not it was produced in SD or HD.