The begging of 'dollar-a-hollar' channels

A good television channel is worth any amount of money that you want to pay for it. Certainly, I would say that the BBC as a whole is easily worth the money that I pay in my licence fee and probably a lot more. But when it comes to digital television, I would say a lot of them are not worth anything at all, and I wouldn't regularly watch them unless you PAID me to.

I would certainly say this is the case with your religious "dollar-a-hollar", evangelical channels, such as Daystar, TBN Europe, and especially right now, God TV. The channel that used to be known in the old days of 1995 as The Religious Channel, then decided that God TV wasn't a bad or indeed, totally blasphemous idea; they are now on the air, begging their viewers to donate money.

They need $4 million dollars in the bank by May 31st in order to pay transmission costs. The channel broadcasts across Europe and North America and I would think they will probably get their $4 million, but I wish they weren't.

People think that donating money to God TV will earn them a spot in the kingdom of Heaven. All it does is line people's pockets. The kind of programming that God TV airs, evangelical "dollar-a-hollar" programmes, is designed basically to get people to donate money to them under the pretense that it will gain them favour with their god. It's praying on their fear of death basically. It's not the kind of programming that I like to watch, and furthermore, I don't believe it's responsible broadcasting to be playing on people's fears.

They've already managed to raise over $1.5 million, so I fully expect them to reach their target. But I do think that that money could be better spent on other channels, who do far better programming. The public television stations in the US, like WNET New York, WTTW Chicago, WGBH Boston and so many others would love to use that money to provide programming that commercial operations won't provide, and the various public radio stations, WNYC, WETA, and all the other NPR, PRI and APM stations, could also benefit massively.

I'd rather viewers didn't waste their money on these so called religious channels.