GREENVILLE, Ill. \u2013 After 35 years of work in television and sports, Bob Briner is a pro at spotting doors of opportunity in the numbers churned out by media-research firms.<\/p>\n\n
So he wasn\u2019t surprised that the new Internet-based Digital Entertainment Network is poised to cybercast a show called \u201cRedemption High.\u201d This post-MTV drama will, according to USA Today, center on \u201cseveral Christian teens, a group almost completely ignored by broadcast television. \u2026 The teens grapple with problems by asking themselves what Jesus would do in their situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The twist isn\u2019t who is producing \u201cRedemption High,\u201d but who is not.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s stunning that the people at a hip outfit like DEN would see this opening right there in the demographics,\u201d said Briner, co-founder and president of ProServ Television in Dallas and a global pioneer in pro tennis and other sports media. \u201cBut of course they saw it! It should be obvious this audience is waiting out there. \u2026 What\u2019s so amazing and so sad is that Christian people still can\u2019t see it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The former basketball player and football coach laughed and waved his giant hand, like he was backhanding a pesky gnat. \u201cLet\u2019s face it. Most Christians still won\u2019t get behind a project in the entertainment business unless you\u2019re gonna make \u2018Becky Goes to Bible Camp,\u2019 \u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n
Briner is a conservative churchman and he doesn\u2019t enjoy making this kind of wisecrack. Nevertheless, the 63-year-old entrepreneur has \u2013 beginning with a 1993 book called \u201cRoaring Lambs\u201d \u2014 grown increasingly candid in his critiques of the religious establishment. His work has had an especially strong impact in Nashville, the Bible Belt\u2019s entertainment capital.<\/p>\n\n
Now, after writing or co-writing seven books in six years, Briner is working with even greater urgency. The early title for his next book is \u201cChristians Have Failed America: And Some of Us are Sorry\u201d and he is writing it while fighting cancer.<\/p>\n\n
Most Christians, he argues in the first chapter, are sinfully content to write for other Christians, sing to other Christians, produce television programs for other Christians, educate other Christians, debate other Christians and to only do business with other Christians.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cShameful,\u201d he writes. \u201cWe have failed and are failing America. I am sorry. In failing to show up \u2026 in the places that really count, where the moral, ethical and spiritual health of our country is concerned, we have left our country exposed and vulnerable to all the ills we now see besetting it. We have not provided a way of escape, even though we profess to know the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s a sobering message. But the key is that Briner is a both successful \u2013 an Emmy winner who has worked with Arthur Ashe, Dave Dravecky, Michael Jordan and many others \u2013 and the kind of generous mentor who has voluntarily helped scores of rookies. A few years ago he sold his homes in Dallas and Paris and moved here to central Illinois to work in a one-stoplight town with students at his alma mater, Greenville College.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cBob is a gadfly \u2013 but one with tremendous grace \u2014 who prods the Church along and asks that we take risks, practice excellence and humbly direct praise to God,\u201d said Dave Palmer, an executive at Squint Entertainment in Nashville. Briner, he said, keeps stressing that work must be \u201crecognized on its artistic merits first and not ghetto-ized by any confining terms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Still, most believers find it easier to blame the secular media for all of society\u2019s ills, rather than doing the hard work of funding and creating quality alternatives.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cBasically, we continue to take the easy way out,\u201d said Briner. \u201cYou can\u2019t offer the gospel to people if you aren\u2019t there in the marketplace and if you have never earned the right to even talk to them. We have failed to give people the chance to choose good things instead of bad things. We have not offered them the best that we have. \u2026<\/p>\n\n
\u201cProducing a \u2018Chariots of Fire\u2019 every 25 years or so won\u2019t get it done. We have to produce a \u2018Chariots of Fire\u2019 every week or every day if we are serious about giving people an alternative worldview to what Hollywood is selling them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GREENVILLE, Ill. \u2013 After 35 years of work in television and sports, Bob Briner is a pro at spotting doors of opportunity in the numbers churned out by media-research firms. So he wasn\u2019t surprised that the new Internet-based Digital Entertainment Network is poised to cybercast a show called \u201cRedemption High.\u201d This post-MTV drama will, according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n