MAURICE A. COOMBS was ordained in 1953 and served the congregation at Maryborough, Victoria; the circuit at Long Plains and Owen in South Australia, and the congregation in the industrial suburb of Albert Park in Adelaide. He was appointed Producer-Director of the Christian Television Association in 1960. The Association represents seven denominations and is responsible for 83% of Religious telecasting, Many of the programmes produced in South Australia have been shown in all parts of the Commonwealth. Mr. Coombs is married, and has three children. He is currently serving on the South Australian Churches of Christ Department of Christian Education; Department for the Promotion of Christian Unity; South Australian Council of Christian Education: the Committee for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity; and the Church of England Division for Radio and Television. Apart from involvement in Television he is responsible also for the weekly production of a religious radio session and a monthly production of the Church of England Half Hour. Mr. Coombs is a member, and morning organist, of the Hampstead Gardens Church of Christ.

      "When the scientific history of this age is written, the television mushroom will compete with that of the nuclear bomb, if only because of the fantastic rate at which television has grown and spread throughout the world."

THE TELEVISION MUSHROOM

      Look at the facts. In the year which followed World War II there were seven stations in the U.S. In Britain the B.B.C. was once again transmitting from the station it proudly started in 1936 as the first regular public service in the world. The French restarted their transmitter on the Eiffel Tower. There was television in Moscow. Only these four countries had television, the rest of the world hardly knew what it was.

      What is the situation fifteen years later? By the early 60's eighty countries had television. There are well over 2,000 transmitting stations and more than one hundred million receivers. Both transmitters and receivers are increasing at the unbelievable rate of 30% every year."¹

      And the end is not yet. Somewhere in the world two stations commenced transmission today and two will commence tomorrow. The dream of inter-continental television as become a reality with the Northern Hemisphere Telstar, and this will surely be followed with a satellite to connect the hemispheres.

      In Australia television arrived with the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956. Today there are 23 stations capable of being received by 81%, of the (Australian) population.

      The pattern of television service differs from country to country. Australian Television is controlled by a Federal Act--the Broadcasting and Television Act. The service has two components--The Australian Broadcasting Commission a semi-governmental instrumentality, and Commercial Companies, which are licensed to use allotted frequencies. This means that in Australia, one Television service is independent and derives its revenue from licence fees and the other is a competitive Industry whose income is derived from its sale of time to advertise.

THE CHURCHES MUST STAND TOGETHER

      The Christian Church in this country is assured of its place in both services. The A.B.C. has its own Department of Religious Broadcasting which covers both Radio and Television. The Rev. James Peter, a Presbyterian, is its head and there are producers in all States. The Churches as such are not directly related to this Department, and are involved at the level of particular persons from various denominations.

      Commercial stations are required by law to devote 1% of telecast hours to the telecasting of religious material. This 1% is distributed through the Christian community according to the proportional representation of each church as shown by Commonwealth statistics. Apart from the free use of 1% of time the channels are required to provide "reasonable facilities" for the presentation of programmes.

      The reaction of the church in this country to the advent of television varied from State to State. In all States churches realised that in order to use the medium wisely there would need to be a large degree of co-operation between them. The degree of co-operation is greater in some States than in others but it ought to be heavily underlined here, that any church adopting

a go-it-alone policy in the medium, must have behind it vast reserves in man power and money or it will quickly find that it is unable to keep pace with the overwhelming demands. My firm belief in the principle of co-operation between all churches is not simply because it is the most economical way for the churches to use television, but because I believe the Holy Spirit is showing us that our faithfulness to the Gospel transcends denominational barriers, when we leave our sheltered institutions and confront the world on the frontier of Television. An opportunity is presented to the Christian Church in this country to reach into homes in a way it has never been able to do before. The message of the Christian Gospel can confront John and Mary citizen and their children even when they are reluctant to approach the agencies and institutions which the community of faith provide for them in their area. To fail to do this because we are unwilling to trust each other, and demonstrate between our denominations the same grace and charity we are on the screen asserting God offers to man, is to give a lie to what we are saying, to grieve the Holy Spirit.

      Having said this we must not assume that all our problems are solved. Once we have decided to stand together on this frontier to proclaim "the unsearchable riches of Christ" we must also accept the disciplines that go with it. Not the least of these is to understand the nature of commercial Television.

WIDELY DIVERGENT VIEWS

      If you are familiar with the mass of literature which treats this subject you will be aware that there are widely divergent views about television. On the one hand it is claimed to be responsible for all our ills and on the other to be the answer to all of them. It is said to keep the family together, to widen horizons, to bring people into contact with experiences and situations they would not otherwise face. It is also claimed to contribute to juvenile delinquency, to stupefying the mind, and to dangerously stimulating appetites and passions people are unable to control. If you are interested in studying these aspects further I would commend to you the recent publication "The Effects of Mass Communication" ² by J. Klapper (1960). There are those who see the one-eyed monster in the corner of the living room as being a further step in the process of manipulation and exploitation of personality which will one day mean we are able to control and direct the actions of people and determine their every thought. To these people "1984"³ is just around the corner and the "BRAVE NEW WORLD"⁴ is a horrible reality. Anyone who is quaking at the knees after reading William Sargents "Battle of the Mind,"⁵ or Vance Packard's "The Hidden Persuaders,"⁶ ought also to read J. A. C. Brown's "The Techniques of Persuasion,"⁷ which whilst not solving entirely the dilemma the former writers pose at least brings into clearer focus the main issues, and I believe breathes something of the Gospel into this rather polluted atmosphere.

THE NATURE OF COMMERCIAL TELEVISION

      For my part I am reduced to propounding a seemingly trivial truism.

      Television is a-moral. Its effects can be good or bad, and the multiplicity of factors involved in causing these effects leaves one hesitant to say this or that particular is the culprit. We can however say this; the Television world into which we as churches enter, is a commercial competitive industry. Its life depends on drawing to itself the greatest number of people for the greatest amount of time. Advertisers are unwilling to pay the high rates demanded if they know there is only a small audience watching at the time. This means that the "doctrine of man"

if I may call it such, held by Programme Managers must be a realistic appraisal of what man really is and what he really likes. Commercial Television therefore, by its very nature must be a mirror which reflects the demands of society at large. It is foolish to refute this by saying that tastes are created by Programme Managers. In most Australian cities people have at least three choices. They can watch a "Who-Done-It" on the Commercial Station, they can watch "Contemporary Art in the Reign of Henry VIII" on the National Station, or they can read a book, go to bed, or do any of the other things people used to do before television arrived. The choice is theirs. If, as I suspect, ratings show that in fact some 60% of the potential audience are engrossed in the "Who-Done-It" (and probably 90% of the real audience) the obvious conclusion to be reaching is that this is what people want from television--entertainment, diversion, escape, and the nature of a competitive industry is thereby further determined. Nor would I want you to think that I believe entertainment, diversion, and escape to be dirty words, what I am attempting to do is to find an objective empirical standard by which we might understand the nature of Commercial Television.

THE DISCIPLINE OF THIS UNDERSTANDING

      The Church neglects this understanding of the medium at its peril.

      I am aware that some theologians side with Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, who see this "modus operandi" of television as being so great a threat to the Gospel that they refuse to give their imprimatur to its use for proclaiming the Gospel. I hesitate to contradict them, and would not dare do so if it were not for the fact that on the opposing side other theological giants insist that despite the difficulties the job can be done. It seems to me that patent truth of the Incarnation is that involvement in the life of the world, despite all the risks, is the very nature of the Gospel and a retreat into Monasticism is a betrayal of the God who is "God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." To proclaim the Gospel in the medium means the stern discipline of understanding the medium and of shaping the message into its categories, preserving on the one hand the integrity of the Gospel and accepting on the other the framework in which it is presented. This means that a presentation of the Christian message on Commercial television must be as entertainment. It must have the polish and skill of the programmes before and after it. No amount of rationalising by the purist can justify the presentation of dull insipid pedantic material. If you are involved in the presentation of the Gospel on television then in modern parlance you must get with it!--or get out! Dedication and piety will not substitute for talent. A performer on television who aims to get to the top and stay there works hard to polish and perfect his act, if he doesn't he is through. Why should a Church choir singing an anthem in a televised service need to have ugly sheets of music propped up in front of them when this would not be tolerated by any producer worth his salt if it were any other programme? The sheer amateurism and shoddiness of some televised church services cannot be offset by asserting that what is offered is the priceless dedication of Christian worship.

PROBLEMS PECULIAR TO THE CHURCH'S TASK

      In accepting this fact however, there is a great gulf into which we can fall. For the most part the treatment of human situations in Television drama is trivial and shallow. Families are viewed through rose coloured spectacles and the over anxiety of the industry not to offend often means that black and white are clearly defined, and you know

the goodies will always come out on top. John Bachman in his book "The Church in the World of Radio and Television,"⁸ focuses this problem when he asks "Is the viewer treated as man or less than man? Is he regarded as a man or as a mouse to be routed through mazes? Is he a man or a machine to be operated or a vegetable to be cultivated? Is he a man capable of growing and learning or simply a creature able to react? If he is regarded as a man he should be aroused and stimulated rather than guarded, as a man he should be enlarged rather than shrunk, he should be exalted rather than degraded." Upon which statement Mr. Peter of the A.B.C. comments in his pamphlet "Principles of Religious Broadcasting", "the danger is obvious enough and is not altogether absent from religious programmes as for example when a delusively simple answer to some complex question is put forward (particularly if some otherwise irrelevant text is quoted to clinch it) or when in the desire to offend no-one nothing is ever said." Whilst accepting then that we can and must present the Gospel in the categories of the medium we must be aware that we walk a knife-edge whereby if we fall down one side we are merely slick and inconsequential, and if we fall down the other we are prosaic and boring.

WHAT RESULTS CAN THE CHURCH EXPECT?

      Having said this, it is pertinent to ask what can the church expect from its involvement in television? But before we do this we ought to touch briefly on the evidence of television's ability to persuade and change. Despite the conflict between Packard and Brown on the extent to which a person can be persuaded by mass media both would agree that he can. Any advertising agency would give you ample evidence of the media's power in influencing consumer choice. A careful examination behind the influence would lead us into a long discussion on motivational research and consumer stimulus which cannot be adequately dealt with here. As I see it the danger lies in a too ready acceptance that what happens in the field of consumer products can be equated with what happens in the field of consumer ideas. To say "Bloggs' soap washes whiter than white" is different in kind from saying "Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of God the Father." What I am trying to point out is that if the Church expects to be able to equate its success on television with the annual statistics for church attendance, it will not only be sadly disappointed but disappointingly unfaithful. People have come back to Church after stimulation from a Television programme, but, and this is the fundamental issue, the programme has done one of two things.

      (1) It has prompted the viewer to seek out the Christian interpretation of life from those in his community he knows are Christian, or (2) It reinforces the stimulus he is already receiving from the Christians with whom he mixes daily.

      Klapper in his book already mentioned suggests that television is a reinforcing agent for existing prejudices and very little evidence can be presented to show that it has been primarily responsible for changing existing views or value judgments. A similar finding was made by the research team under Parker, Barry and Smythe which findings are published in "Television, Radio Audience and Religion."⁹ Despite these two observable principles backed by thorough research no Christian would want to rule out the direct action of the Holy Spirit but this is a very difficult response to isolate.

A SERVICE OFFERED TO THE WORLD

      The Church must see its involvement in television as a service offered to the world. It must present the Gospel as Tillich would put it

"not for consent but for decision." Its communication must be such that a genuine decision is possible. But it must also realise that in the last analysis this decision will be reached out of the context in which the viewer lives and the dominant factor in that context is the lives of the Christians around him. Dr. Gordon E. Jackson Dean of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary has said¹⁰ "I am wondering if the major function of religious radio and television is not that of indirection or correlation the basis of which is Common Grace? This would be a liberating approach for these media, I would think; for they could be freed to do what they can do so well without guilt and without a nagging sense of failure. I, for one, would be pleased to see these media operate primarily on the basis of Common Grace asking right and significant questions pointing to ultimate answers using their art as a method of indirection and leave to the social interpersonal dimension one locus of which would be the churches, the role of participative communication at the Gospel level." This obviously means that the church cannot and must not expect that involvement in television relieves it and individual Christians from the responsibility of communicating the faith in life and work, Faith and Order.

      Finally let me briefly try to summarise what we have been trying to say. I have attempted to show how vast television has become in a few short years, pointing out my firm belief that the Christian Church can only adequately use this medium when it is prepared to trust each of its component parts, and to set up an agency whereby the work can be effectively done. We have seen that although television is an a-moral instrument it often demeans man because its competitive nature demands acquiescence to his choices. However, if the Church is to be involved in Commercial Television, it must accept the framework that exists, but ought not to expect of its involvement much more than a prompting towards or reinforcement of the intra-personal communication which is being carried on by the community of the Faith.

      In the final analysis the communication of the Gospel is from a person to a person, and we stand under the judgment of God if we attempt to off load our responsibility on to the inventions of our hands, no matter how marvellous they may be.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

      1. The Eighth Art (Symposium)--Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
      2. The Effects of Mass Communication--J. Klapper.
      3. 1984--George, Orwell,--Penguin.
      4. Brave New World--Aldous Huxley--Penguin.
      5. Battle for the Mind--W. Sargent--Pan.
      6. The Hidden Persuaders--Van Packard--Penguin.
      7. The Techniques of Persuasion--J. A. C. Brown--Penguin.
      8. The Church in the World of Radio and Television--Bachman.
      9. Television Radio Audience and Religion--Parker, Barry and Smythe--Associated Press.
      10. Dean Jackson in World Christian Broadcaster--May, 1963.

FURTHER READING--

"The Outsider and the Word of God"--Sellers. (Abingdon).
"How You Can Broadcast Religion" (N.C.C. Press).
"The Christian as Communicator"--Harry De Wire (Westminster).
"The Improper Opinion"--Charles Marty. (Westminster).
"Television, Crime, Drama"--R. J. Thomson Chesire. (Melbourne).
"Language and Religious Language"--Jules Moreau (Westminster).