Christian Broadcasting Network


The Christian Broadcasting Network is an American conservative evangelical Christian religious television network and production company. Founded by televangelist Pat Robertson, its headquarters and main studios are based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States. CBN has been described as having been "at the forefront of the culture wars since the network’s inception in the early 1960s."

Background

CBN was founded in 1960 in Portsmouth, Virginia by Pat Robertson, who had recently become a born-again Christian. In late 1961, he began broadcasting religious content, funded by small donations from individuals and local churches. One of the company's mainstays is The 700 Club, which uses a religious variety program that mixes sermons, interviews, and religious music. The name refers to a fundraising drive where Robertson successfully sought 700 viewers willing to contribute $10 a month to sustain the station. The 700 Club is the longest-running program in the variety format. Initially focused on devotional content, The 700 Club became increasingly political in the late 1970s, adding news segments.
Today, CBN News, provides news updates to The 700 Club and produces religious news programs such as CBN NewsWatch and Christian World News; it also produces a special hour-long block of prime time election coverage hosted by Robertson during American presidential and mid-term elections, airing on Freeform, which also carries The 700 Club and the half-hour talk show 700 Club Interactive. CBN also operates online channels on its website, such as the CBN News Channel.
CBN Asia manages Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, an international relief and missionary effort, and has international programming, producing local programs including Solusi in Indonesia and From Heart to Heart in Thailand; CBN India produces three shows, a daily Hindi program Ek Nayee Zindagi, a bi-weekly Telugu program Nireekshana and an award-winning weekly Bengali program Samadhan. The company also produces versions of The 700 Club aimed at Latin American and British audiences. CBN has broadcast programs in over 70 languages.
On April 29, 1977, CBN launched a religious cable network, the CBN Satellite Service. The channel was later revamped as the CBN Cable Network in 1981, and began incorporating secular programming alongside religious content. In August 1988, it rebranded as The CBN Family Channel, before selling it to International Family Entertainment two years later as the network became too profitable for CBN to maintain its nonprofit status. In September 1990, it rebranded as The Family Channel. IFE later sold it to News Corporation in 1997, which later sold it to The Walt Disney Company in 2001. The terms of the sale to International Family Entertainment stipulated that the channel continue carrying two CBN programs, including The 700 Club. It is often thought the deal stipulated that the channel maintain the word "Family" in its name in perpetuity, however this was later dismissed by network executives as an urban legend.
CBN now serves mainly as a production company for The 700 Club, and four other syndicated shows: CBN NewsWatch, Christian World News, 700 Club Interactive and The Brody File, a news-analysis program hosted by political journalist David Brody. CBN and Regent University jointly produced the film First Landing.
Some of CBN's programs also air on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, Cornerstone Television, FamilyNet, LeSEA Broadcasting Corporation, TCT and Middle East Television, all of which are Evangelical Christian networks. The secular commercial stations that continue to air The 700 Club in syndication air CBN's annual telethon during the last week of January.

Former CBN-owned broadcast stations

CBN entered into the broadcasting industry in October 1961, when WYAH-TV in Portsmouth – the group's flagship station – signed on the air. Initially madeup of Christian programming, the station's schedule took a more secular tone in the early 1970s. In 1962 WYAH-TV was joined by an FM sister station, Norfolk-licensed WXRI, which broadcast a format of Christian music and teaching programs. Both WXRI and WYAH-TV were based in Portsmouth, and remained there after CBN relocated its main headquarters to Virginia Beach in 1980.
CBN later signed on WHAE-TV in Atlanta in June 1971. In January 1973, CBN purchased KBFI-TV in Dallas and changed its callsign to KXTX-TV; that April, CBN and Doubleday Broadcasting became involved in a license trade in which CBN acquired Doubleday's license to operate a competing station, KDTV; the KXTX-TV call sign, existing programs and programming was moved by CBN to the former Doubleday-owned frequency. The ministry signed-on its final station, WXNE-TV in Boston, in October 1977. The ministry's broadcasting subsidiary, the Continental Broadcasting Network, ran these four outlets as family-oriented independent stations – featuring a mix of religious programming and secular acquired programs, including westerns, sitcoms, drama series and children's programming – a format that would be later adopted by the LeSEA Broadcasting Corporation when it began launching its own television stations in the 1970s.
In addition to WXRI, from 1969 to 1982 CBN also owned a simulcast network of five FM radio stations in upstate New York, known as CBN Northeast; the stations originally signed on in 1948 by a farming cooperative as the Rural Radio Network.
CBN gradually sold all its broadcast stations during the late 1980s and 1990s. In the following tables, former CBN-owned stations are arranged alphabetically by state and community of license.
Note: Two boldface asterisks appearing following a station's call letters indicate a station which was built and signed-on by CBN.

Television stations

City of license / MarketStationChannel
TV 		Years ownedCurrent ownership status
AtlantaWHAE-TV/WANX-TV **46 1971–1984CBS affiliate, WGCL-TV, owned by Meredith Corporation
BostonWXNE-TV **25 1977–1987Fox affiliate, WFXT, owned by Cox Media Group
Dallas–Fort WorthKXTX-TV 133 1973CW affiliate, KDAF owned by Nexstar Media Group
Dallas–Fort WorthKXTX-TV 1, 239 1973–2000Telemundo owned-and-operated
Portsmouth, Virginia
WYAH-TV27 1961–1989CW affiliate, WGNT, owned by the E. W. Scripps Company

In addition, CBN planned to build a television station in Richmond, Virginia, WRNX on UHF channel 63. However, CBN sold the construction permit for that station to National Capitol Christian Television in 1982, which signed on the station as WTLL in 1984. That station was eventually sold and in 1986, converted into secular independent station WVRN-TV, which shut down in 1988.
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Programs

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