{"id":1535,"date":"2013-03-05T15:26:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T15:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/03\/history-channels-bible-is-a-hit-does-that-mean-tv-will-get-religion.html"},"modified":"2013-03-05T15:26:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T15:26:00","slug":"history-channels-bible-is-a-hit-does-that-mean-tv-will-get-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/03\/history-channels-bible-is-a-hit-does-that-mean-tv-will-get-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"History Channel\u2019s Bible Is a Hit. Does That Mean TV Will Get Religion?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

Up until now, the year\u2019s big cable-ratings story has been the ever-growing success of zombie drama The Walking Dead on AMC. Sunday night, though, History channel had the highest-rated scripted drama on cable for the year, for the beginning of a story in which only one main character rises from the dead, and that not until nearly the end.<\/span><\/div>\n
The first two hours of History\u2019s Mark Burnett miniseries adaptation of\u00a0The Bible<\/strong>\u00a0scored 13.1 million viewers, more than any fiction cable show of the year\u2013and,\u00a0as the New York Times notes<\/a>, dwarfing anything on NBC for the past month. (The biblical epic numbers did not quite match The Walking Dead in viewers aged 18 to 49, the demographic that determines advertising rates, but it did get a healthy 5.6 million.)<\/span><\/div>\n
Those are the kinds of numbers that get TV executives\u2019 attention,<\/strong>\u00a0and \u201cattention\u201d in the TV business means copying. Last year, History pulled meganumbers with Hatfields and McCoys; now NBC is\u00a0developing a Hatfields and McCoys series<\/a>. So I wouldn\u2019t be surprised to see more religious epics coming to TV\u2013stories aimed, like The Bible miniseries, at the comfort zone of believers. (I haven\u2019t watched the entire History miniseries, but the first two hours were sort of a Picture Bible come to life, with the Old Testament violence dialed up and the Old Testament sex dialed down, and the kind of stiff dialogue that avoids seeming to \u201cdisrespect\u201d Biblical figures by making them sound like people rather than animatronic figures.)<\/span><\/div>\n
So we may see more TV\u00a0for<\/em>\u00a0religious believers as a result of The Bible. What I\u2019d love to see\u2013but am not so sure we will\u2013is more TV\u00a0about<\/em>\u00a0religious believers.<\/span><\/div>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up until now, the year\u2019s big cable-ratings story has been the ever-growing success of zombie drama The Walking Dead on AMC. Sunday night, though, History channel had the highest-rated scripted drama on cable for the year, for the beginning of a story in which only one main character rises from the dead, and that not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHistory Channel\u2019s Bible Is a Hit. Does That Mean TV Will Get Religion?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Up until now, the year\u2019s big cable-ratings story has been the ever-growing success of zombie drama The Walking Dead on AMC. Sunday night, though, History\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/03\/history-channels-bible-is-a-hit-does-that-mean-tv-will-get-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"History Channel\u2019s Bible Is a Hit. Does That Mean TV Will Get Religion?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Up until now, the year\u2019s big cable-ratings story has been the ever-growing success of zombie drama The Walking Dead on AMC. 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