Background
CBN was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1961 using a religious variety program format that has been successfully used in religious broadcasting ever since. One of the mainstays of the network is The 700 Club, the longest-running program in the variety format. The network's journalistic branch, CBN News, provides news updates to The 700 Club and produces religious news programs such as CBN NewsWatch and Christian World News, and also airs a special hour of prime time election coverage hosted by Robertson during presidential and mid-term elections in the United States, seen on ABC Family. The hour long talk-show 700 Club Interactive is also seen on ABC Family. CBN also operates online channels on its website, such as the CBN News Channel.
CBN Asia manages Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation (OBI), an international relief and missionary effort, and has international programming, producing local programs including Solusi in Indonesia and From Heart to Heart in Thailand; CBN India produces five weekly series. There are versions of The 700 Club aimed at Latin American (Club 700 Hoy) and British audiences (The 700 Club With Paul and Fiona) . CBN has broadcast programs in over 70 languages.
On April 29, 1977, CBN launched a cable network, CBN Satellite Service. It was later revamped with a mix of both religious and secular programming, and renamed CBN Cable Network. CBN Cable Network was eventually renamed The Family Channel, which was later sold under that name to Fox and was then known as the Fox Family Channel. Fox later sold it to Disney, which renamed it ABC Family. The terms of the original sale stipulated that The 700 Club and another show would continue to be shown on the Family Channel and that the word "Family" would remain in the channel's name in perpetuity.
CBN is now a production company for The 700 Club, and the other syndicated shows CBN NewsWatch, Christian World News, 700 Club Interactive, and The Brody File, a news-analysis program hosted by political journalist David Brody. CBN and Regent University jointly produced the film First Landing. The current news director is Rob Allman.
For more details on development of the Family Channel, see Television networks preceding ABC Family.Some of CBN's programs are also aired on Sky Angel, Trinity Broadcasting Network, Cornerstone Television, FamilyNet, LeSEA Broadcasting and Middle East Television (which was founded and owned by CBN, until sold in the early 2000s to LeSEA), all Evangelical Christian networks. Those secular commercial stations which continue to air The 700 Club in syndication (along with ABC Family) air CBN's yearly telethon in the last week of January.
Read more about this topic: Christian Broadcasting Network
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