Beyond Today Airing on WGN America

June 25, 2010

Beyond Today Airing on Superstation WGN America

We are very pleased to announce that Christ has opened a new door for us to proclaim the good news of His Father’s Kingdom! For a number of years the possibility of broadcasting on television coast to coast in the United States was but a dream. Now, it is finally a reality!

On the set of "Beyond Today"

Beginning on July 11, the Beyond Today television program will begin airing on superstation WGN America! What adds to this great news is the fact that the program will air at the very good time of 8:30 a.m. (Eastern Time) every Sunday, delivering to a potential audience of 75 million households in 209 TV markets.

Working With Results

Rudy Rangel on camera 1 with teleprompter

Everything we do in Media and Communications Services involves continual monitoring and testing. We are always working to better ourselves in each avenue of our proclamation effort—whether it be in the printed word, in print advertising, on the Web, on radio, or now on television.

After airing Beyond Today for 13 weeks on 5 U.S. broadcast television stations, this exciting new opportunity has become available to us. We are taking advantage of an offer that is far-reaching—providing an immediate boost to our reach, viewership and response to Beyond Today.

As you may have read previously on our Inside United: Realtime blog, the Beyond Today presenters and production staff have been working with different ideas to determine how God’s truth can be most effectively presented. That includes how to best integrate our online media together with traditional television and print media. To that end, our recent experience on our pilot program of five commercial television stations has been invaluable. We will now use this experience and the improvements it helped generate to reach a dramatically expanded audience.

About WGN America

WGN America, which reaches over 190 million people, has made this exclusive Sunday morning airtime offer to the United Church of God. WGN’s signal reaches all 210 Designated Market Areas (DMAs) except for Chicago. We are looking at pricing to possibly add Chicago in as well.

Clint Porter, Gary Petty, Rudy Rangel and Steve Myers prepare for a recording session

By purchasing a nationwide market, we can reach each DMA for 1/12 the cost of our current method of buying ala-carte TV stations in just 5 DMAs—Boise, Cincinnati, Indianpolis, Peoria and Springfield. By purchasing airtime in this sizable way our costs are 12-times less per station than they would be if we purchased one or two stations at a time.

Buying in large volume is a very good use of our budget in a cost/benefit sense. We are walking through this open door. We have nothing to lose but everything to gain. This will maximize our previously approved 2010-2011 airtime budget and the boldness of such a move will show the seriousness of our desire to powerfully reach this country.

Every TV Market in the U.S.

Steve Myers discusses his script

So, to elaborate further, beginning Sunday July 11, 2010, our 30-minute Beyond Today television program will air on WGN America television, in 209 U.S. media markets. This includes every large and small city in the country except Chicago. Our program will be seen simultaneously at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, 7:30 a.m. Central, 6:30 a.m. Mountain and 5:30 a.m. Pacific.

We have found from past experience in purchasing airtime on radio, that the earlier airtimes are almost always more productive in terms of response than later ones. We think part of the reason is that people are often tuning in for news, religion and entertainment as they are preparing to attend church later in the morning.

Please see the list of Designated Market Areas which shows the areas where our programs will be viewed. WGN’s family-friendly programming can reach almost 200 million people, 24-hours a day, every day.

Enter Your ZIP Code for Stations

If you receive cable or satellite television and have WGN as part of your programming package you will be able to watch Beyond Today every week. You can find stations in your area at www.wgnamerica.com by entering your ZIP code in the box at the top of the right hand column.

We hope you are as excited about this dramatic undertaking as is the media staff at the home office. We truly want to boldly and powerfully reach people with His message of good news! Adding nationwide television to our print, Internet and other proclamation efforts is a good move. We must take full advantage of this new open door.

The responsibility of preparing these television messages carries a sober weight. We ask for your prayers and support that our presenters, production team and everyone involved in all elements of our media outreach will receive an extra measure of God’s Holy Spirit. As you’ve heard preached during your years in God’s Church, “The Church of God moves forward on its knees.” So, please add this new initiative to your daily prayer life.

Peter Eddington—Operation Manager, Media and Communications Services