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View Full Version : so what was i watching on tbn?


skippercollecto
April 19th, 2005, 07:32 PM
I was channel surfing a little bit ago and came across some badly-acted drama on TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) that looked like a series or miniseries. I caught two little scenes: One talked about implants in the brain that will allow people to live 200 years and also serve as birth control, and the segment also talked about a purge that killed 80 million in North America; the other was about a guy bringing another guy some banned movies--Schindler's List, Braveheart and Lawrence of Arabia--and the other guy had never heard of them.
It wasn't listed on the TV schedule, so TBN must have changed its programming. I know it wasn't Left Behind or Omega Code because I would have recognized them. It looked like a weird stepchild version of "V"!
If the acting wasn't so melodramatic and the post-apocalyptic plot lines so obvious borrowed from umpteem similar stories I might have sat and watched it. But what was it that I was watching?
Mary

jewels
April 19th, 2005, 09:00 PM
I have no clue, I haven't kept up with much contemporary Christian fiction, but it doesn't sound like any of Peretti's or Dunn's books.....there's been a slew of apocalyptic lit in the Christian bookstores with the Left Behind series success.

The banned movie selections are definitely interesting. Those 3 movies on the same ban list? Unless you are denying a whole lot of historical events (each of those movies were based on a real person's life/legend) about the only thing tying them together is they all deal with some form of repression being fought by people who stood on what they believed (SL=that the Jews should not be allowed to be slaughtered, LoA =that the Arabs could and should self-rule rather than be colonies, Braveheart=the Scots fighting English oppression and rule.

I can't stand TBN because of the quality of the show's they tend to get. John Michael Talbot (an incredibly proficient Christian musician) had challenging words to incoming CCM (contemporary Christian) musicians about being the best at their craft that they could be, in the 15 yrs. since he issued that challenge, CCM has truly come of age and consistently mirrors or exceeds the quality of "secular" pop, rock, alternative, and rap/hip-hop music. Hopefully the same quality influx will happen within Christian film-making and it will grow up to be as high or higher quality than standard hollywood fare.

Jewels

skippercollecto
April 20th, 2005, 04:09 AM
I agree with what you said about TBN and contemporary Christian music. I listen to two different CCM stations here in town and I don't even have a contemporary pop station programmed on my car radio buttons anymore. But TBN's programming is so weird! I'm not talking about the religious/evangelical talking heads preaching--it's the dramas on the network that are so bad! Once in a while it will show an old 50s or 60s Biblical epic, and those are fun to watch, but their own series productions make the stuff on the SciFi Channel look like Olivier doing Hamlet. The really annoying thing is--the TBN original programming could be easily be so much better.

SWCrusader
April 20th, 2005, 08:44 PM
Is that from cruising this board it's become obvious that Battlestar Galactica (primarily original, but I suspect the new show too) have a much higher percentage of Christians as fans than your average sci-fi show. This to me is probably because religion is actually a part of the shows, not marginalized or ignored (like star trek). On the whole I think this is a good thing, just a little wierd to me. Of course I come from a much more secular country than the USA though, so maybe sci-fi fans here in the USA tend to be practicing Christians more (but that hasn't been my experience here in 6 years).

As to the movie - never heard of it or anything like that. Banning Braveheart??? Wacky!

jewels
April 20th, 2005, 09:11 PM
I agree with what you said about TBN and contemporary Christian music. I listen to two different CCM stations here in town and I don't even have a contemporary pop station programmed on my car radio buttons anymore. But TBN's programming is so weird! I'm not talking about the religious/evangelical talking heads preaching--it's the dramas on the network that are so bad! Once in a while it will show an old 50s or 60s Biblical epic, and those are fun to watch, but their own series productions make the stuff on the SciFi Channel look like Olivier doing Hamlet. The really annoying thing is--the TBN original programming could be easily be so much better.
I can't even watch TBN, which is really funny when you consider I've enjoyed at times, some of the same preachers/teachers on the radio, ones like Jack Hayford and Andy and Charles Stanley. Folks like that chick with the big hair and the 1970's Vegas stage makeup: I just want to send them to my Mary Kay rep for a makeover because the visual distracts me from listening to see if they have anything reasonable to say. I've never tried to watch their drama's but Lexie watched some animated kid's show on it one day and I was appalled at the lack of quality and the tone in which the "moral" summaries were delivered. TBN needs to broadcast Veggie Tales and forget about doing their own kid shows. The folks at Big Idea know how to tell a story with a moral and make it as fun as a Pixar movie (at least for preschoolers).

Senmut
May 10th, 2005, 09:17 PM
Probably just some more of TBN's Fundie glop, I would imagine.