The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 10

10 THE BOSTON GLOBE TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 1992 Dissent marked broadcast attempt from start By Philip Bennett and James L. Franklin GLOBE STAFF losses necessary in today's market to establish a permanent presence on the airways. Some former executives who worked in broadcasting for the church say, however, that the venture was doomed from the start by exaggerated expectations and lavish spending, poor business sense, and infighting that at times turned bitter and personal. "There was bad judgment being used from day one," a church member involved in starting broadcast operations said yesterday. "After a while Christian Scientists involved did not understand how this was in line with their church.

I didn't understand why our church was doing this." Critics of the media operations tend to focus on Hoagland, a former CIA official whose tough-minded vision of the expansion into broadcasting persuaded church leaders to shift resources away from the unprofitable but respected -daily newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. To his supporters, Hoagland has brought a modern edge to the spirit of the church's founder, Mary Baker Eddy, who ventured into newspaper publishing. His detractors say that while manipulating concern ovef the bottom line for projects he opposed, Hoagland has spent freely to support his own. Church members on both sides consider the autumn of 1988 a turning point After the purchase of WQTV (Ch. 68) two years earlier and shortly after the launching of the television news program "World Monitor," a showdown over the future of the newspaper resulted in the resignation of its editor, Katherine Fanning, and two deputies.

A few months later, under Hoagland's direction, WQTV dropped commercial programming as part of what was termed ''public service media expansion." The station began carrying extensive news roundups, interview programs, daily programming, in Spanish, and "inspirational programming" on religious themes. According to a church member and businessman involved in the transformation, as well as a local television producer, the church then hired a series of expensive consultants, one of whom maintained a suite of While Monitor programming has re-! ceived critical praise for its serious journalism, the church entered the cable industry at a time when many local markets were already saturated with other channels. The Monitor Channel went on the air in May despite lacking the millions of subscrib-" ers generally considered a prerequisite begin operations. While officials said that I the number of subscribers is nearing a tar- get of 5 million households, the channel reportedly losing several million dollars month. Still, some early supporters say they con-, tinue to have faith that a place exists for station like that run by the church.

"There is no doubt that in 10 years' time this will be a viable and economic thing," said Jim Lawrence, of the Boston consulting firm LEK Partnership, who worked for the church's media operations in the late 1980s." "It's a question of who gets there firsts The question is, how much money does it cost to get there and how long does it take?" he said. rooms at the Four Seasons Hotel during his frequent visits to Boston. "I've been in this business for 12 years, and, I never saw anything like it," said the television producer. "These guys were like foxes in a chicken house. These guys talked the Monitor into incredible expenses.

It was a flagrant wast of money from the beginning." "Monitor Television eliminated all the management who disagreed with them and brought in these incredibly highly paid consultants who were essentially yes-men," said the church member. One of the consultants, who declined to be identified, disputed that characterization in an interview yesterday, saying he found the media operations to be well-managed. Former and current employees agree that the church spared little expense in acquiring state-of-the-art equipment and hiring talented reporters and broadcasters at salaries competitive with the highest-paying companies in journalism. In the grand design, John Hoagland, the president of Monitor Television, once said, what the church-run media empire needed to; succeed was a "greater harmony among the elements." i Yet from the start, harmony was a missing from the ambitious broadcast operations of the Christian Science Church, which have divided the church's membership over issues ranging from money to style to identity. .) Hoagland announced yesterday that the Monitor Channel, the 24-hour cable network and his brainchild, was for sale after almost months on the air.

"It's an extraordinarily attractive opportunity," he was quoted as saying in a press release. f. For some industry analysts, the decision reflected the church's unwillingness or inability to continue the multimillion-dollar Christian Science chairman resigns; cable TV goes on sale i v. -i VfciAl nil hi i 1 pi The position of clerk of the Mother Church was given to Olga M. Chaffee, another member of the board of directors.

Juan Carlos La-vigne, who was named clerk Feb. 28, will become managing clerk. Carnesciali said the church retains a strong interest in broadcast ing. The proposed sale of The Monitor Channel "in no way indicates that we are giving up our involvement in any of the publishing and broadcasting media that people use today to obtain their news and information," he said in a prepared statement. Asked if the church will continue to originate television programs, Carnesciali said, "We have every intention of doing that, of improving the quality, and making it even better than before." Carnesciali said the church's "current inventory of should remain of interest, adding that "we feel certain we will find our proper niche in today's broadcasting environment" The changes raised the hope of some critics, who see themselves as a loyal opposition to current church administration.

Lee Z. Johnson, who was forced out of office as the church's archivist in a dispute over the Knapp book, welcomed the changes. "As a church member, I like to think that other church members all have a sense of personal repentance and a great sense of forgiveness for all concerned," Johnson said. "I now expect there will be a closing of ranks in a really healing way." But a staffer at The Christian Science Monitor said yesterday afternoon there was no sense of euphoria after the changes were announced. "People rushed back and had to rush into meetings for the next edition," the staffer said.

A prominent church member said she was alarmed that church and Publishing Society executives continue to blame the failure of the expensive experiment in broadcasting "on an outside media onslaught" "I think we have shifted the furniture but not changed the scenery," said the member, who asked to be kept anonymous. "A real change would require a restoration of our 'central thrust of being a church and a retreat from the idea that media are the centerpiece of the CHURCH Gontinued from Page 1 hfcm, a director, and the vacancy she left on the board of directors was filled by Al M. Carnesciali of, Costa Mesa, who only 10 days ago was named the church's spokesman as manager of its Committee on Publication. J. Harry King, a spokesman for "he Monitor Channel, said the offering of the cable TV network would not affect station WQTV (Ch.

68), which is owned by the Mother Church, The Christian Science Monitor newspaper, or the radio oper-ajions of the church. Although sources said that church officials will dissolve the Monitor Channel if a buyer is not found by June 15, King emphasized tnat "we expect a sale." I "That's not just hyperbole," he sjdd. "We have been actively looking for equity partners since Day One, last May 1, and that process continues." While the personnel changes were extensive, church officials and critics alike said they were uncertain about the effects, since four of the ffye members of the board of directors remain in office and other officials will stay on in different roles. Senior executives at one point yesterday suggested the reorganization had been coming for two years, according to a source. Their prepared statements also announced no changes in programs aside from the intention to sell The Monitor Channel.

A leading, critic of the church reacted cautiously late yesterday. "Christian Scientists long for reconciliation and healing but there is yet no clear indication that the direction of the church has changed," said historian Stephen Gottschalk, one of the several prominent members who have joined in rare public criticism of their church. The reorganization follows a series of news stories disclosing that church officials financed their cable network by borrowing from pension and restricted endowment funds. Responding to a reporter's questions, church officials said they had spent $250 million over the last five yfcars and continued to spend about $4 million a month on television programming alone. I Critics had charged that of a- $473 million deficit the church re ported in its monthly Journal over the last five years was attributable to television, radio and the new monthly magazine, and a high-ranking church official leaked information that such operations were running a deficit of $8 million a month.

Officials also admitted they had borrowed $41.5 million from their employees' pension fund since the first of the year and used it to repay $20 million taken- for new media operations from a restricted endowment fund officials had promised members would only be used for the The Christian Science Monitor. They acknowledged borrowing another $5 million from an endowment Eddy established in New Hampshire. The changes also follow unusual public protests by prominent members over the church's publication of a controversial book that critics say was issued to gain a $97 million bequest needed to balance church accounts. The church said it will not withdraw the book "The Destiny of the Mother Church," by Bliss Knapp. Critics charge Knapp's book makes Eddy equal to Jesus Christ, and they say its viewpoint was rejected by church officials until the cash crisis brought on by the broadcasting and publishing expansion.

Knapp's wife and sister-in-law provided bequests now valued at more than $97 million if the church published the book as "authorized Christian Science literature" and distributed it through the 2,600 reading rooms, which are bookstores and libraries operated by local, or branch, churches. A court in Los Angeles Feb. 24 granted a 90-day delay in payment of the bequest while other potential beneficiaries challenge whether the church fulfilled the terms of the wills. The reorganization, which returns to a cabinet-style government used in the infancy of the church, put members of the Christian Science board of directors in the church's chief operating posts. Carnesciali, newly named to the board, also took over as manager of the Christian Science Publishing Society.

Another director, Richard C. Bergenheim, was named to the new position of editor in chief, to coordinate religious publishing and broa-casting for the church. 1-v GLOBE STAFF PHOTO JOHN TLUMACK1 Home of the cash-strapped First Church of Christ, Scientist, on Massachusetts Avenue. to end "a spending pattern that has clearly been irresponsible. "As a church member, I salute, these first steps, but I can't help" thinking that the parallel betweeh'' Robert Maxwell's borrowing from" pension funds and what was done af1, Gottschalk, a former employee of the Committee on Publication, the church's public affairs arm, suggested later that "a significant minimal indication of good faith would be the removal from the reading rooms of a book that never should have been published in the first place." Removal of Knapp's book should 'not be carried out "in a spirit of suppression but in recognition that its views are as offensive to Mrs.

Eddy as they would be to most Christians and that it was a mistake to publish it in the first place," he said. Another church member familiar with the church's media expansion said that by deciding to sell the cable TV operation, officials had decided the Monitor are extremely uncom fortable for church members." Monitor network buyer may be tough to find, analysts say BUYERS so closely associated with Christian winning, flagship World Monitor nightly news program bears a resemblance to such programs as ABC's "Nightline" and PBS's "McNeilLehrer News Hour." "The programs are quality programs," said Patrick Mellon, vice president for programming at Tele- 'I think the situation is aptly summed up in the fact that they've set a date to go off the LARRY GERBRANDT, cable TVmarket researcher cable a cable operator based Continued from Page 1 irjg that effort and turning it into a 'buy" proposition." But those earlier efforts were, in fact, just talk: Attempts last year to sail a one-third interest in the Monitor Channel were unsuccessful. Qhurch officials maintained they wjere sabotaged by church members who wanted the television operations to fail. Potential buyers of The Monitor Channel are looking at assets that include a package of weekly news apd public affairs programs including the staff and equipment to produce them and agreements with cable operators to distribute those programs to about 4 million subscribers. 2 Channel officials said yesterday irjwas not yet clear whether the network would retain the Monitor name Science if it were sold.

WQTV-TV (Ch. 68), a Boston television station owned by the church that broadcasts Monitor Channel programs, is not currently for sale, officials said. The Christian Science Monitor daily newspaper, the monthly World Monitor news magazine, and the church's public radio and shortwave broadcasting activities also are not affected, they added. Last week, officials at The Providence Journal Co. the parent of The Providence Journal-Bulletin newspaper and Colony Communications, a cable operator said they had talked with Monitor officials but emphasized that the discussions were general in nature.

Analysts said that other cable networks, including the Learning Channel, might have some interest in the Monitor guaranteed its ultimate success. But this faith in the channel's programs did not take into account a major problem: Most cable operators are unable to offer the channel, even if they want to, because they lack the capacity to add additional programming. The bottleneck, which will be overcome with advanced technology and new investment, is not expected to ease for several years and requires that potential buyers have deep pockets. In the meantime, the channel competes for the few available spots with networks such as Court TV and the Cartoon Channel, scheduled to be launched this fall. The Monitor Channel's programming no matter what the quality -by most accounts has a limited appeal and faces serious competition from existing news and information channels.

For example, its award-j Channel's programs and subscribers. Those bullish on the channel's sales prospects might look to the National Broadcasting pur- chase last year of Financial News Network, with roughly 20 million subscribers, for a whopping $154.3 million. But analysts say this was a special case, with NBC paying a premium to buy out the main competitor of its CNBC financial cable network subsidiary, after a bitter bidding war with another suitor. Typically, analysts say, cable networks can expect to be valued at between $1 and $5 per subscriber, which would value the Monitor Channel at between $4 million and $20 million. Cable giants such as Cable News Network have upwards of 60 million subscribers.

Since the Monitor Channel's launch last May, network officials have repeated almost mantra-like that the Monitor's quality programming filled a serious deficiency in the nation's television diffc and Norfolk, Va. "But it's a narrow audience they're going after, high-end demographics with an interest in international news." If the Monitor Channel does attract serious interest, the potential buyer could have a strong negotiating advantage. "As in any deal, when news gets out about other financial problems, the dealmakers you're trying to work with, smell blood in the water and you lose a lot of leverage you might have had," said John Higgins, finance editor at Multichan- nel News, a trade publication..