Network TV Programming

Officers, Committees, Staff

Membership Directory

Commission Meetings

Media Advocacy / Education

Network TV Programming

Worldwide Faith News

Links for Communicators

Religion Calendar

NCC Home Page

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

About the Commission
Contact Wesley M. "Pat" Pattillo,
Senior Program Director for Justice, Advocacy and Communication
National Council of Churches USA
475 Riverside Drive, Suite 880
New York, NY 10015
Phone: 212-870-2048
Fax: 212-870-2030
Email: wpattillo@ncccusa.org

About the National Council of Churches USA

NCC Home Page

The National Council of Churches is a founding partner of the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission (IBC), through which America's faith community  provides television programming to the affiliates of the three major broadcast TV networks each year.

The IBC currently consists of 

• National Council of Churches USA
• U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
• Union for Reform Judaism
• New York Board of Rabbis
• Islamic Society of North America.  

The NCC's Program Director for Justice, Advocacy and Communication, Wesley "Pat" Pattillo, currently serves as President of IBC.  Ava Odom Martin of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 2008-11 chair of the NCC's Electronic Programming Committee, sits on the IBC program board. Other groups which have participated in the IBC at various times during its quarter-century history include the Southern Baptist Convention Broadcast Group and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.  

Through IBC, the Communication Commission offers its member faith groups the unique opportunity to help produce documentaries and liturgical programs that are channeled through this long-standing television partnership.

• ABC's Visions and Values series gives the IBC four one-hour time slots each year for documentaries produced in rotation by IBC members.
• NBC's Horizons of the Spirit also provides four hours per year for documentaries produced by the IBC faith groups in rotation. 
• CBS produces the half-hour Religion and Culture documentary series four times a year in collaboration with IBC and its members.
• In addition, the networks schedule several hours of network time each year for Easter, Christmas, High Holy Days, and other seasonal worship programs, produced in rotation by IBC member groups.

To see a list of IBC documentaries now on the air, click here. 
For a list of recent seasonal worship specials, click here.

Each network distributes IBC productions to all of its affiliates by satellite.  Each local station may then choose to present the program in a time slot of its choice over a several-week span of time. The faith groups are not charged for air time. IBC programs may also be carried on a station's digital sub-channels as well as on its primary broadcast channel.

All members of the Communication Commission are eligible to bid for the chance to produce one of the NCC's programming slots each year.  On occasion, two or more denominations will join forces to produce an NCC-sponsored program for network showing. 

National Interfaith Cable Coalition

National Council of Churches is one of the founding members of the National Interfaith Cable Coalition (NICC), a television programming consortium which now includes approximately 70 Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith groups. In 1988 the group founded the VISN network, which later merged with the Southern Baptist-sponsored ACTS channel and was renamed the Odyssey network.

Today, as Faith and Values Media, NICC continues to provide an opportunity for NCC and its member denominations to present their programs to a national cable TV audience through Odyssey's successor, the Hallmark Channel.  In collaboration with Faith and Values, Hallmark carries a schedule of  programs dealing with moral and spiritual values on more than 1,500 cable systems.

FaithStreams.com, an inspirational website operated by the coalition, offers an internet-based digital video-streaming service that features many of NCC's past  network television productions, providing yet another outlet for the member denominations of the Communication Commission.