The preachers who utilized radio moved easily into television. By the early 1980s there were a hundred syndicated religious programs on television. The most successful programs were broadcast in two hundred or more markets, which meant they virtually saturated the nation. Hundreds of other preachers telecast their Sunday services, or other types of religious programs, in local markets.

The decade of the 1980s was the most tumultuous and political. It began with televangeists forging a coalition that provided critical support for the election of Ronald Reagan. While political pundits generally acknowledge the importance of the Christian Coalition in shaping the conservative agenda of the new Republican majority, few seem to have understood that this coalition began with, and is substantially sustained by, persons who "feast on the word" of conservative radio and television preachers.

Since Reagan's first term in office, religious broadcasters have played a significant role in defining the social aganda of the nation. One of the reasons pundits may continue to miss the significance of televangelists in shaping the conservative political and social movement of the past two decades is that big-time preachers are no longer so high profile.

Toward the end of the 1980s religious broadcasting appeared to self-destruct in the wake of financial and sexual scandals that rocked several major ministries. While every television ministry was effected by the scandals, this crisis developed more or less simultaneously with an economic shake-up that was destined to occur even if there had been no scandals. The rising cost of air time--which the televangelists themselves had created by bidding against one another for prime time slots in audience rich markets--was making it increasingly difficult to do business. The lost of revenues that immediately followed the scandals merely hastened the reorganization of program delivery.

During the 1980s America experienced a cabeling of the nation, rapid expansion in the number of UHF stations, and efficient satellite delivery. The religious broadcasters were poised to take advantage of each of these technologies. What is now developing on television is niche broadcasting. Religious broadcasters have been as effective as any group in recognizing and exploiting this new market mechanism. They have similarly utilized radio. The combination of radio and television broadcasting adds up to one of the most powerful communications structures in the United States.

The large number of channels has made measurement of audience size increasingly difficult, but the evidence points to the conclusion that as religious television approaches the millennium it is stronger than it has every been. Moreover, satellite delivery is now making possible the presence of American televangelists in the living rooms of an ever larger number of peoples of the planet.

This page seeks to accomplish three objectives: (1) to provide a gateway to resources about televangelism on the Internet, (2) analytical resources to help better understand what religious broadcasting is and how it has developed, and (3) to create a forum to discuss the implications and meaning of this American creation that is now taking on global dimensions.

Readers of this page are invited to contribute to the fulfillment of each of these objectives. We encourage you to call our attention to Internet resources that are not accessible through this page. We welcome information about the location of scholarly resources including archives, published and unpublished manuscripts. Once we get the essentials of this page constructed, we will create a forum to encourage discussion about religious broadcasting. Please write us at Hadden@Virginia.edu