BYU TV Celebrates 10 Years of Broadcasting

With the beginning of 2010 in a few short days, BYU Television will celebrate ten years of operation—and the festivities will include more than cake and ice cream. Executives will be transforming the aim of the station and with that, launching new programming and services.

With the beginning of 2010 in a few short days, BYU Television will celebrate ten years of operation—and the festivities will include more than cake and ice cream. Executives will be transforming the aim of the station and with that, launching new programming and services.

“As the reach of BYU Television expanded, so has the need for us to expand our vision and recognize…that there are many others out there who share our values, but may not share our doctrine,” said Derek Marquis, managing director for BYU TV.

BYU Television, a service provided by BYU Broadcasting, is often confused with KBYU TV. While KBYU TV is a public service limited to Utah, BYU Television reaches audiences across the world, and Marquis said the station has grown significantly in the last ten years.

“When we first launched the channel we were on an obscure tear of the dish network, reaching fewer than a million households initially,” Marquis said. “Today BYU television has grown to over 650 cable systems around the world…to the point that we’re available in excess of 50 million households in the U.S. alone and millions more internationally.”

With a new direction and a decision to target a larger audience, executives have been rebranding the station. Sterling Van Wagenen, manager of content and media integration for BYU TV, said that even the old tagline, “Keeping You Connected,” is going to go.

“The obvious implication of that tagline is keeping you, as BYU alumni and as members of the church, connected to BYU and the BYU experience,” Van Wagenen said. “We’re initiating a new tagline for the channel that sort of defines the goals and values of the channel.” The new tagline that will launch in January is “See the Good in the World.”

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Currently, BYU television delivers content from various BYU campuses and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Programs often include BYU devotionals, BYU sports, General Conference, and various religious and educational series. With the new changes, executives have focused on finding new content meant for a wider audience, but programs that still maintain LDS values. Four original series, produced by BYU TV, will launch in January as part of the new content.

The Generations Project is a genealogy-based show where individuals with compelling stories trace their roots. In a way, it is a reality show, Van Wagenen said, where the individuals discover things about their own family at the same time the audience does.

Another series, Messiah: Behold the Lamb of God, will follow the life and mission of Jesus Christ from the pre-mortal life to the final judgment.

The two other series are Iris, a documentary biography series, and The Food Nanny, a type of make-over show where family mealtimes are rescued in order to help families connect more.

Executives have widened their scope not only in content BYU produces, but also in finding outside programs. With literally thousands of hours of primetime television, BYU TV cannot produce enough to fill that time, Van Wagenen said.

Managers have already begun acquiring programs, including one from Kevin Sullivan, producer of the popular Anne of Green Gables series. Wind at My Back portrays a family struggling to stay together during the Great Depression.

“With the new primetime schedule, we’re looking at essentially a thematic approach to evenings,” Van Wagenen said. “It will be much more focused on niche audiences. Again this is an attempt to get more non Latter-day Saint viewers on our channel. The schedule will be much more predictable, regularized to some significant degree.”

While BYU TV has hired new professionals this year to help with accomplishing the new vision, the station will not expand staff significantly. This is due to the university’s contributions from student employees. The full-time staff numbers around seventy people, but the student employees number over two hundred.

The station will also be overhauling all websites and reaching out through social media to better connect to audiences and to make the BYU TV experience richer.

“We’re expanding, we’re opening out in an attempt to share not only our values but also look at other individuals that have the same values that we do,” Van Wagenen said. “We’re talking about a broader, much wider ranging . . . concept for BYU television.”