Since it was launched in 1995 the Christian Channel Europe (CCE) has grown from a six-hour single analogue channel to a 24-hour multi-channel analogue and digital service. This progress was particularly accelerated during 1999. Last year we saw CCE sign a five-year contract for the digital broadcast of its religious-themed service with BSkyB giving it access to approximately 1 million plus BSkyB subscribers. The ASTRA satellite brought the Channels' “family-oriented information and entertainment programmes” to a total of some 4 million households, ensuring its status as the leading religious channel in Europe.
Earlier that month amongst other successful deals for carriage TeleDenmark launched the CCE service. Whilst the channel experienced phenomenal success in English-speaking households, to satisfy market demand for the service throughout Europe, it began working on plans to offer other language options: Nordic, German and Latin languages (either French or Spanish).
Then, in December 1999, a new phase began as CCE launched what is now the mainstay of their operation: the Dream Family Network, a multi-channel subscription service, which provides four television stations and four radio stations via the Sirius digital satellite. Besides religious broadcasting some selected secular channels such as The Travel Channel and EuroNews are beamed to their increasing number of subscribers. Negotiations soon got underway in every European country for carriage of the new 24-hour service.
Now broadcasting across Britain and the rest of Europe, parts of North Africa and the Middle East 24 hours a day from their own 16,000 sq. ft. studios in the North-east of England they claim that their Dream Family Network offers “a wholesome digital alternative to Sky Digital and OnDigital”. Obviously, this “alternative” is based on the Christian values which they seek to propagate. They claim that many families are “concerned about the decline in broadcasting standards”.
All this success and growth may seem impressive - but things weren't always this way. Rory and Wendy Alec are the founders of CCE. Married in South Africa in 1987, they came to Britain in 1991 and were immediately asked to set up a television department at London's Cornerstone Christian Centre. Having previously worked together in the advertising industry in South Africa producing adverts for TV and radio provided a foundation for the couples' work here.
Having become committed Christians whilst in South Africa they maintain that the establishment of CCE was the result partly of a conviction that “God had a huge challenge for them” and partly the fulfillment of a “dream” they had. At that time there was literally no Christian television in Europe although dozens of people were trying to launch it. Some of them had been trying for years. Everyone they met said that it was an impossible task and that even those with all the money and power required had been unable to do it. Nevertheless, their conviction grew and during the next three years whilst overcoming many obstacles, not least of these the financial ones, they launched the channel in the autumn of 1995 amid much controversy.
During the press conference of the launch, held in the Cumberland Hotel, Mayfair, the right of such a channel even to exist was challenged by journalists. In the book Against All Odds by Wendy Alec, about the struggles of the young couple, Pastor Colin Dye, senior Minister of Kensington Temple, rails against such opposition. He says that “in our 'age of tolerance' how come the powers-that-be allow pornography and violence to flourish but are active against the Christian message?” He points out that journalists and editors exercise their right to question and voice their opinion, producers exercise their right to spread their beliefs, but Christians appear not to have the same right.
Colin Dye attacked the television world by saying that unlike it CCE is “totally up front about the values it propagates and the objects it seeks to achieve”. He reckoned that the concerns over imbalance were unfounded and that with the balance tipped for too long the other way, CCE brought a much-needed corrective.
This controversy over the launch was set against a backdrop which was an unfortunate one for the evangelicals: many European Christian groups were operating in an environment where there was a backlash against American-style televangelism. CCE was perceived as being aligned with that style and thought of as too aggressive. Fears about the influx of US televangelism are now seen to have been unfounded: although the service was initially carrying two US programmes, one of its goals, as stated in its Trusts' public documents, is to have a distinctive European character and to encourage the production of its programmes in Europe.
Another worry was that of continual appeals for money being made to vulnerable audiences”. Critics needn't have been concerned: under ITC regulations there are no conditions and no circumstances under which CCE are allowed to ask for funds on air.
At the time newspaper articles were scathing. Peter Popham, writing in the Independent on Sunday, told how in America television audiences had “been subject to such hysterical blandishments for years”. Religious television in Britain “still means ... Songs of Praise” he said. Sometime after the launch the Morning Star labelled the upstarts “a disturbing phenomenon” whilst The Times called them “brain dead”.
In contrast to what the press said the months following the launch saw CCE's popularity increase rapidly. Unhappy subscribers to cable were starting to demand the channel forcing nationwide cable operators to contact CCE asking for proposals and contracts. One of the most amazing outcomes of the couple’s appearance on BBC1's Good Morning with Anne and Nick was the telephone response of the viewers. On the show the producers allowed just two responses to be voiced - one for Christian television and one against. Not widely known is the fact that behind the scenes the BBC had, in the short time that the programme was on air, received 104 telephone calls from the public. 100 for Christian television in Britain and only four against!
An apparently cynical press and a television world with, what the evangelicals say, are often blatantly anti-Christian stances, provided only some of the hostility. History records that most, if not all, Christian radicals, and reformers, those such as Martin Luther and the Wesleys, experienced resistance and opposition, as their founder Jesus Christ did, from the same quarter: the religious establishment of the day. And so it was in this case.
The established traditional denominations had been planning to launch a cable channel, Ark 2, in the spring of the following year. Backed by the Church of England, the Catholics, the Methodists, and other denominations, it hoped to present “the safe, responsible, balanced face of mainstream British Christianity”. Ernest Rea, head of religious broadcasting at the BBC, called CCE an “unwelcome development”.
Pastor Dye turned on the religious establishment by saying that the channel is “thoroughly evangelical and charismatic, without compromise” and claimed that “this emphasis is an accurate reflection of world-wide growing Christianity”. He went on, “it is not surprising that both liberal and conservative Christian groups are offended. Their approach has failed to stop the Church decline in Europe ... nominal, watered-down, and wooly CCE is definitely not!'
Christian Channel Europe was dedicated at a lively meeting the following April at Central Hall, Westminster. Robert Leach, financial manager, and contributor to the Church of England Newspaper, was there - not on behalf of his newspaper but in response to a personal invitation by Rory Alec. He wrote about his experience in his newspaper on Friday 3 May 1996.
He explained how it was clear that most of the channel's support comes from the evangelical Free Churches and how he was seated surrounded by their representatives: black Pentecostal pastors who greeted him warmly. In answer to the question “and which fellowship do you lead, brother?” he told them that he belonged to an obscure religious sect called the Church of England.
In terms of bewildered amazement, he reports how “in an almost reckless example of faith, they (CCE) are running a television station without even a television camera (at that time they were hiring one) yet they have managed to pay £100,000 worth of bills on time each month”. He contrasted this with the “supreme irony” that just the day before he had been in the Church Commissioners boardroom for an investment Committee meeting discussing the millions managed for the C of E pensions board.
Yes, at the dedication people were invited to give money to the channel but, he says “with no more wild claims than would be made in any parish church appeal”. As an accountant he thought that the channel was “hopelessly under-funded and under-resourced”. He went on to say that “It seems destined to fail; indeed, it should never have started”.
Seven years on and there's no sign of Rory and Wendy Alec giving up. Their channel is now being broadcast to an audience of millions and whilst some services are 'free to air' (bundled free of charge with other digital broadcasts) their subscription customers increase daily.
You may not agree with their religious convictions, but you cannot help acknowledging the determination and tenacity that led to this astounding success: the realisation of this young couple’s dream. You may not call yourself a Christian or even believe in the existence of God' at all - but if God does exist and one who is concerned with the aspirations of us mortals then, just maybe, he was the one, as Rory and Wendy Alec believe, who fulfilled and even initiated this dream.