The show is part of the larger Living Our Faith evangelization campaign, which, according to its coordinators, encourages people to "meet Christ, know Christ and live Christ." The archdiocese was not planning to incorporate a television show into its campaign, but those involved with the project agree that everything fell into place. The show, with that same title, premieres December 1st.
My experience has been that the planning processes in our Archdiocesan usually crush innovation and initiative, so it might be a good sign that even something as conventional as a television show survived or avoided this.
Each episode of "Living Our Faith" will feature four segments. It will begin with a guest interviewed by Bob and the archbishop, a feature story that usually involves some field reporting, an "Ask the Archbishop" segment where Archbishop Dolan answers questions submitted via e-mail, and closes with reflections by the archbishop.
Everyone's very, very complimentary of our Archbishop's suitability for television. He's comes across well before a congregation or audience, and was enjoyable as a guest on his brother's radio show. I expect he'll have to be careful not to come on too strong for TV. (He does have the benefit of working up a presentation [audio] on Archbishop Fulton Sheen.)
Even with production crew cutting their pay, the show will cost $1,500 per half-hour episode, more when there is any location work.
Archdiocesan communications director Kathleen Hohl says "it's going to knock your socks off".
I want people to be proud to be Catholic. If I can ignite something in people who say, 'I know I was missing something, I need to get back to Mass, I need to get back to my roots,' then we've done our job. If it triggers someone that already is a regular Mass attendee and it helps them to live their faith more fully and richly, then we've done our job.
I'd say if viewership goes up over time, then they've done their job. As a hedge against expectations, Ms. Hohl went on,
"If Mass attendance increases, that's great," Hohl continued. "But if even one person's faith life is enriched, we've done our job. How do we measure that? ..."
I'd measure it against what else might have been done with $1,500 plus per week.
The show airs Saturday's at 11 a.m. from December 1st through 29th, 2007, then switches to noon January 5th through March 22nd, 2008 on WISN-TV Channel 12.
At our Archdiocese's website, Catholic Knights presents Living Our Faith with Archbishop Timothy Dolan - Episode #1
Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan welcomes Ann and Jeanna Giese to this week's program. Jeanna is the first person in the world known to survive rabies without a vaccination. She and her mother, Ann, share the role their faith has played in her remarkable recovery.
In addition to WISN 12,
The program also is available on Time Warner Cable's Wisconsin on Demand, Channel 1111.
The blurb concludes,
Visit livingourfaith.net for more information.
but there's no more information there as of now. Stay tuned?
Anything like this these days anything needs to be put online as well. If they don't do that, there's really no point. People don't arrange their lives around scheduled broadcast TV anymore, especially for something like this.
ReplyDelete