Gospel Music Channel Celebrates Extraordinary First Year
The Gospel Music Channel, America’s first 24-hour television network dedicated to gospel and Christian music, reached a milestone recently as the channel celebrated its first anniversary for what turned out to be a hugely successful year.
The Gospel Music Channel, America’s first 24-hour television network dedicated to gospel and Christian music, reached a milestone recently as the channel celebrated its first anniversary for what turned out to be a hugely successful year.
Founded by Charley Humbard, Gospel Music Channel’s president and CEO and former general manager of Discovery Channel’s digital networks, and Brad Siegel, GMC vice chairman and former president of Turner Entertainment Networks, the channel closed out its inaugural year with nearly 3.5 million subscribers in 61 markets and 350 cities, according to Gospel Music Channel spokesman Jeff Johnson.
Humbard attributes the accomplishment to the mixture of a premium quality channel with a passionate, underserved, nationwide audience.
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“One thing we’ve recognized from both mine and Brad’s past careers is that high quality programming presented in a world class way is a sure way to successfully reaching your audience,” said Humbard.
Humbard’s passion to bring quality to the network was reflected in a number of different accomplishments for the channel, including three prestigious BDA Design awards – two gold and one silver – for the channel’s on-air graphics package, advertisement contracts with 11 blue chip companies, and a first-class programming schedule.
The Gospel Music Channel featured several world premier concerts as part of it’s first year line up, including Third Day’s “Live Wire” concert and the NFL “Super Bowl of Gospel,” as well as over 100 hours of original programming, including the artist biography series “Faith and Fame” and the “American Idol”-style national talent search “Gospel Dream 2005,” which recently had its finale broadcasted on the channel.
Nearly a thousand contestants competed in the “Gospel Dream 2005” talent search, which was hosted by Jonathan Slocumb and featured a star-studded panel of judges that included platinum recording artist Kelly Price, music critic Andy Argyrakis, and Zomba Label Group president Max Siegel, whose company awarded the competition’s winner, 23-year-old morning disc jockey Brian Smith, with the grand prize of a record contract.
“I think a lot of the show’s success came from the fact that there’s so much talent out there today that does not get a chance to be seen by record executives,” Humbard told The Christian Post. “‘Gospel Dream’ is just a perfect fit to showcase the talent of today where their only stage is the church, which is a very important stage of course, but this is a real way for them to have an opportunity to get a major deal and to get national exposure on both the channel and also through the recording contract.”
“[Gospel Dream] is the kind of show you would hope to see on the Gospel Music Channel,” he continued. “We had an amazing amount of talent, diverse in age and ethnicity, and it’s great because it’s all the things that the channel so strongly represents, being inclusive of all the different styles of gospel music and appealing to all the different types of fans that listen to the genre.”
Message-Based Format
Showcasing all styles of Christian music, which is a lyric-based format rather than a musical one, on the Gospel Music Channel is an aspiration Humbard says was partly stimulated by his upbringing as the son of America’s first televangelist, Rex Humbard, which provided the CEO with a childhood filled with some of gospel music’s biggest names.
“I really grew up in gospel and Christian music, as the son of Rex Humbard. I remember just being around it all the time,” Humbard said. “In those days it was everything from the Johnny Cash’s to the Pat and Debby Boones to a young Amy Grant, to Andraè Crouch as a regular at our church to Mahalia Jackson on New Year’s Eve and also great quartets like the Cathedrals. So I was really exposed to all styles of gospel music, and I took that same vision and experience into the Gospel Music Channel, which is to create a channel that is inclusive and represents all styles for this huge but diverse audience for Gospel music fans across the country.”
But while the genres of gospel music stretch from southern gospel to hard-core punk rock, the music finds its unity in the underlying message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – a quality that also distinguishes the Gospel Music Channel from other “family friendly” programming available on the air.
“Yes we’re family friendly and a great entertainment channel, but there’s also the great Gospel message that you get from the lyrics,” said Humbard, who shared a moving testimony sent in by one of the channel’s viewers who had just returned from doing military service in Iraq.
“He said he was distraught about not being able to get his old job back and just about everything in his life at that time,” Humbard recalled. “And he wrote that he was sitting in the living room crying when he saw Jimmy Wayne on the Gospel Music Channel signing ‘I Love You This Much,’ and he said that, ‘I can’t tell you what that meant to me in my life. It was so inspiring for me to remember that God loves me and that Christ loves me,’ and it was just inspiring for me to see that, though we’re creating GMC as a great commercial music channel, the impact this music will have on people is just tremendous.”
One major impact the channel had this year was with the hurricane benefit concert “Gospel Angels: A Concert to Restore Hope” which featured over a dozen Christian artists and raised more than $200,000 in donations for the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
“That effort made me very proud that we, although small at the time and in our first year, could do something that would be meaningful and help people and remind people that no other music brings a message of hope for tomorrow like gospel music,” said Humbard. “It was a perfect thing for our network to step up and be a leader and do right away in our first year.”
Better Than The Last
When asked how GMC will follow up on such a milestone year, Humbard responded simply, that the channel will act “as in anything dealing with the Gospel.”
“Every time you do anything, you do it better than the last,” said Humbard.
In regards to next year’s direction for the channel, Humbard said that GMC will be working more closely with the artists in the gospel music industry.
“Next year we’re going to be incredibly artist focused – everything from sponsoring artists tours to artists just constantly being on the channel,” he said. “I know the artists will support the channel because the channel is there to help get them word out about their music and to give them a world class stage to perform on.”
One desire Humbard expressed for GMC’s second year was for the channel to be broadcasted nationwide – a feat he thinks won’t be too difficult considering how passionate the gospel music audience is.
“We’ve had over 40,000 calls and requests with people asking how to get GMC on in our area since last June,” said Humbard. “And so we encourage all gospel music fans to contact their cable operators and let their requests be heard, A, because I know that they’re going to love the channel from all the feedback we’re getting, and, B, I think it’s important in this world today to have this channel on nationwide.”
For more information on the Gospel Music Channel, call 1.877.4.GOSPEL or visit GospelMusicChannel.com.
