The Expansion issue of Freedom Magazine, voice of the Church of Scientology, gives a glimpse inside the new Scientology Media Productions (SMP) in Hollywood, California. It quotes Mr. David Miscavige, Chairman of the Board Religious Technology Center and ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion, on why the new facility was created and its importance.
Now, with SMP in place, the Church is poised to reach everyone, everywhere, over the airwaves, the Internet and via publications. It’s the culmination of a strategic expansion plan rooted in the core purpose of Scientology, which Mr. Miscavige stated as, “to share what wisdom we possess, to help others to help themselves.”
“Shortly after the turn of this decade, and with everything now in place for broadscale delivery, the next inevitable step was global communications,” Mr. Miscavige explained. “Why not our own dedicated television network?”
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From its earliest days, the mission of Scientology has been raising humanity to ever-greater heights—and a key method to getting that done is via the religion’s own media. Scientology Founder L. Ron Hubbard was an author, photographer, scriptwriter and filmmaker, and that media background is infused into Scientology’s rapid, worldwide expansion. The Church has long had its own film studio, Golden Era Productions, near Los Angeles, as well as printing and distribution facilities in the city and in Europe.
Now, Scientology Media Productions distills the mass communications energy of tomorrow into a single enterprise whose outreach is via magazines, TV, radio, special events, the World Wide Web and more. It gives the religion capabilities to deliver its message in ways that were never possible before. The new global media center is also the icing on the cake of Church expansion in recent years.
Scientology has faced the same opportunities and challenges as many institutions in the Digital Age: If homes are filled with big screens, smaller computers and tablets, virtual reality and augmented reality devices, and citizens’ pockets and purses are packed with smartphones, how does an organization “speak to” the growing wired, digital-always-connected audience to attain visibility and reach across all available communications channels? If you’re the Church of Scientology, you invoke the pioneering spirit that has always been intrepid and resolute, and you become a global digital broadcaster.
SMP’s arsenal of online media will include live productions and video-on-demand broadcasting; “over the top” streaming to computers, tablets, TVs, Internet TV boxes and automobile Internet-enabled devices; broadcasting and Internet radio and podcasts; websites; social media; and creation of apps that funnel all of the above to users.
This is the reason SMP was wired from the ground up to meet today’s, and tomorrow’s, definition of a global “digital broadcast facility.”
The Scientology Network will always be on. Projections are that the network will reach 20 million homes, generate millions of streaming views, content impressions and be state-of-the-art, able to reach any connected device, 24/7, anywhere in the world and in multiple languages.
Read the article on the Freedom Magazine website.
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