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The 700 Club
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The 700 Club is the flagship news talk show of the Christian Broadcasting Network, airing on cable's ABC Family and in syndication throughout the United States and Canada. In production since 1966, it is currently hosted by Pat Robertson, Terry Meeuwsen, Kristi Watts, and Gordon Robertson, two of whom (one male and one female) will host on any given day. Lee Webb serves as the CBN News anchorman. Previous co-hosts over the years included Ben Kinchlow (1975-88, 1992-96), Sheila Walsh (1988-92), Danuta Rylko Soderman (1983-87), and Lisa Ryan.
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Encyclopedia
The 700 Club is the flagship news talk show of the Christian Broadcasting Network, airing on cable's ABC Family and in syndication throughout the United States and Canada. In production since 1966, it is currently hosted by Pat Robertson, Terry Meeuwsen, Kristi Watts, and Gordon Robertson, two of whom (one male and one female) will host on any given day. Lee Webb serves as the CBN News anchorman. Previous co-hosts over the years included Ben Kinchlow (1975-88, 1992-96), Sheila Walsh (1988-92), Danuta Rylko Soderman (1983-87), and Lisa Ryan. Tim Robertson served as host for a year from 1987-88 along with Kinchlow and Susan Howard while his father ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States in the 1988 campaign.
The show presents news stories from Robertson's religious and political perspective, often relating stories to passages from the Bible which are generally followed by commentary from the hosts. Celebrities and other guests are interviewed about religious views. The news segments frequently emphasize eschatology (apocalyptic). The style of news reporting on the show has been criticized by many as unfairly biased.
Religious lifestyle issues are presented with a distinct Pentecostal/charismatic flavor. Robertson is a Southern Baptist and was an ordained minister with that denomination from 1961 until he surrendered his credentials in 1987 to prepare for his failed presidential bid in 1988.
History
In 1961, Robertson bought the license for WTOV, channel 27 in Portsmouth, Virginia. It had gone off the air five years earlier due to poor viewership (the call letters now belong to WTOV-TV Channel 9 in Steubenville, Ohio, an NBC affiliate). The station returned in October as WYAH, broadcasting twelve hours of Christian programming to the Hampton Roads market each day.
In 1962, the station suffered financially and almost closed. To keep the station on the air, WYAH decided to produce a special telethon edition of the show. For the telethon, Robertson set a goal of 700 members each contributing $10 a month, which was enough to support the station. Robertson referred to these members as the '700 Club' and the name stuck. The telethon was successful and is still held annually.
After the 1962 telethon, The 700 Club continued as a two hour a day local show. It consisted of a lot of music, preaching, group prayer, bible study, and some talk. The show started out as a Christian variety program. The music was hymns, instrumental pieces, southern gospel music, and urban gospel music. The show was run two or three times a day.
In addition, Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker started on the channel in 1964 as hosts of a children's show, Come On Over. It consisted of prayer and bible stories aimed at children. The show also featured puppet shows and Davey and Goliath reruns. They also began hosting their own adult Christian talk show. Their Come On Over Show, much to their dismay, added Bugs Bunny and Casper cartoons and Little Rascals reruns into the mix, in 1967, but the show itself expanded to two hours. At that point WYAH went from being non commercial to commercial and added several hours of secular shows to its schedule. The Bakkers disagreed with the direction their show and the station overall was taking. By 1970, their shows were each cut to thirty minutes. The secular cartoons then aired as their own shows in a weekday afternoon block. Finally, the couple left WYAH in 1972 to join the Trinity Broadcasting Network where they developed the PTL Club. They soon left TBN as well to begin their own show taking the PTL Club name and inspirational channel. The PTL club began to be syndicated in 1975. In 1972, when the Bakkers left, some staffers at the station reportedly responded by destroying Bakkers' sets and puppets.
Robertson evolved his 700 Club by cutting back on music and preaching and heading toward the talk show format developed by Bakker (though without the puppets) and transformed the 700 Club from a nightly religious themed telethon to a religious talk show (still with some music). At this point some Contemporary Christian Music artists visited the show as well.
While the organization was named the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), The 700 Club only aired on WYAH, as well as its sister stations in Atlanta (WANX) and Dallas (KXTX). The stations, including WYAH had mostly content similar to a general entertainment station (cartoons, Sitcoms, westerns, old movies), but with four to 6 hours a day of religious shows, including The 700 Club which aired three times a day.
In 1974, The 700 Club began to be syndicated nationally. Some of the stations included WPIX 11 in New York, KTLA 5 in Los Angeles, WPHL-TV 17 in Philadelphia, WDCA 20 in Washington, DC, and many others. Two editions were offered. The 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. weekday edition was live. The taped edition was only an hour, containing the first hour of the show, leaving out the last 30 minutes. Stations also had the option of running all 90 minutes taped as well. Some stations like WPHL ran the entire 90 minute show once a day and the hour long edition an additional time. Stations like KTLA and WPIX ran only the hour long edition. The roster of stations grew to over 100 markets by 1976. Generally, affiliates of networks like ABC, NBC, or CBS, as well as strong independent stations took the hour long edition. Smaller independent stations as well as stations with religious or minority formats took the 90 minute edition. In some markets the show aired on multiple stations.
The show finally got on the air in Boston in 1977 when CBN's WXNE Channel 25 went on the air. That station had a family entertainment format consisting of dramas, westerns, and old movies, in addition to Christian programs. That station also became home of the daily Catholic Mass for the Archdiocese of Boston (which moved from WSBK 38).
Also, in 1977, The 700 Club got on the air nationally on the newly launched Christian Broadcasting Network Cable Channel. That station only ran Christian programming 24 hours a day 7 days a week and ran no general entertainment, unlike WXNE, WANX, WYAH, and KXTX.
Between 1978 and 1980, talk about current political issues became a part of the 700 Club. News segments were added in the first 20 minutes of the show. The 700 Club clearly endorsed a politically conservative agenda. The "Religious Right" movement was now becoming part of the CBN agenda. This had influence in the 1980 presidential election as well as congressional elections. The 700 Club continues to discuss current events from a conservative viewpoint to this day.
In 1980, The CBN UHF stations began Sunday commercial operation from about 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. While these stations were predominantly secular programs on weekdays and Saturdays, Sundays were non commercial and only consisted of Christian programs prior to this time. The next year, CBN Cable added 15 hours a day of secular programming. While the CBN stations consisted of cartoons, sitcoms, and some recent off network fare, the CBN cable network consisted of health shows, pre 1965 sitcoms, westerns, old game shows, and family dramas. The 700 Club itself evolved to more of a magazine format rather than a talk/variety show. By 1983, The 700 Club had the same format it has today.
Later in the 1980s the UHF CBN stations were sold separately. During this period The 700 Club continued to air on CBN Cable as well as many commercial secular stations and Christian stations nationally. In 1987, the syndicated 700 Club was cut back to an hour, which it is today. Also, Trinity Broadcasting Network added the 700 Club to their schedule on weekdays at 3 p.m. that fall. The 700 Club still airs there at that time today.
CBN Cable became known as Family Channel in 1988. That network added more cartoons and family sitcoms in the 1990s. Family Channel was sold to News Corporation in 1998, becoming Fox Family. The 700 Club continued its three time a day airings. "Fox Family" was sold to Disney in 2001 and at that time became "ABC Family".
The 700 Club now airs on ABC Family, part of a contractual obligation originally made as part of the Family Channel's sale to News Corp.
International versions of The 700 Club are Club 700 Hoy, broadcast in Latin America, and The 700 Club With Paul and Fiona, in Great Britain. Begun in October 2004, the latter is co-hosted by Paul Jones and Fiona Hendley Jones. The Pat Robertson version also airs in Great Britain on GOD TV, God Europe, Loveworld TV, Gospel Channel, OBE TV and KICC TV.
The 700 Club strongly supports Israel, especially in its disagreements with the Palestinians and the U.N. Among its frequent Jewish guests are Michael Medved and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who share its conservative Judeo-Christian beliefs.
The 700 Club Asia
An Asian edition of the show, The 700 Club Asia, originally premiered in the Philippines in the mid-1990s on GMA 7. It was originally produced and hosted by Pat Robertson's son, Gordon Robertson, and co-hosted by broadcaster Mari Kaimo, and Philippine TV personality Coney Reyes.
In 1998, Reyes took over as host and producer of the show, with Tricia Amper Jimenez as co-host. When Reyes left the show in 2000 for medical reasons, it was retooled as The Club, hosted by Jimenez, Peter Kairuz and Carla Martinez.
In 2001, the show reverted to its old format and moved to ABS-CBN (a network unrelated to Pat Robertson's CBN), where it aired on its sister station, Studio 23. Kairuz remained as host with veteran singer Maria Teresa "Dulce" Llamedo-Cruz and TV personality Chat Silayan-Bailon (1959-2006), who later died of colon cancer.
In 2006, the show moved to GMA's sister station, QTV 11. Kairuz still hosts the show, with Reyes returning to co-host. The show also features Kata Inocencio, Maricel Laxa-Pangilinan and Felichi Pangilinan-Buizon.
The 700 Club in India
An Indian Hindi edition of The 700 Club, named Ek Nayee Zindagi airs daily on SAB TV.
Controversy
The 700 Club has occasionally been the subject of controversy due to political statements made on the show by Pat Robertson (see the Pat Robertson controversies page for a more in-depth discussion of controversies that surround him).
Often, controversy centers on subjects of homosexuality, religion and politics. The LGBT community has expressed concern over the comments made on his show, fearing that it will provoke a violent reaction from potentially unstable individuals.
The U.S. National Better Business Bureau says of Christian Broadcasting Network / 700 Club "...unable to verify the organization's compliance with the following 11 Standards for Charity Accountability: 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19, and 20."
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