The last television station at which I anchored the evening news hired a consulting firm to research audience response to our news product. The consultants assembled a group of about eighty typical local news viewers in a hotel conference room and showed them tapes of two newscasts, one from our station and the other from the top-rated competition. Each of the viewers had in hand a small device about the size of remote control with a circular dial in the center. In its starting position, the dial pointed to the number five; when turned to the left it would head towards zero, but to the right it would increase towards a maximum of ten. The viewers were told to register their interest in the newscast as they watched it, zero representing boredom, ten meaning they were captivated.
After collecting the instant-response data from the sample viewers, the consultants played back the tapes with line graphs overlaying the picture. The graphs showed precisely how interested the audience was in each story as they watched it. It was humbling indeed to see my face on the screen and watch the graph at times dip down, down, down. But what was fascinating about the exercise was the emphasis on instant gratification. In a push-button, remote-control society, television—and especially news television—has to constantly grab the viewers’ attention. We were shown that we must constantly push emotional buttons to keep the viewer from skipping to other channels. We had to emote, dramatize, and sensationalize, casting the emotional hook to reel in the audience.
That perspective is part of why I am glad to no longer work in television news. But it also reveals something about the way our most powerful cultural medium exerts its influence: It seeks an emotional hook to grab you instantaneously and hold you. It titillates the senses in order to draw in the media consumer. For Christian apologists, advocates for Christ and his Church, this is our competition. It behooves us, then, to beware of both how the competition works and how we can use its strategies for a higher purpose—that of making disciples of all nations. Surely the gospel has a hook, one that has sunk deep into countless hearts for twenty centuries. The question is: How do we break through the thick but superficial crust of contemporary culture to grab and hold the attention of all those couch potatoes for whom Christ bled and died?
In one of the best-selling pop-theology books of the 1970s, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? Fr. John Powell, S.J., analyzed five levels of communication. I find his analysis helpful in understanding the difference between the way television and other mass media communicate and the way we want to communicate as bearers of the Word. The levels go in descending order:
5. Cliché communication. Casual and superficial. For instance, the routine “How are you?” offered as a courtesy but not really interested in a thoughtful answer.
4. Talking about others. Idle chatter that reveals nothing of significance. Gossip is its worst form; it may be as mundane as talking about baseball statistics.
3. Sharing one’s thoughts and ideas. This is the first level at which one reveals something personal, though it is only on an intellectual level. Talking politics, especially among like-minded folks or those who can amicably agree to disagree, tends to remain on this level.
2. Sharing ones cares and concerns. At this level, one has opened one’s heart to another. This kind of communication is personal, revealing, and befitting a friendship or family relationship.
1. Peak communication. This is communication that hits the mark. It is the communication of love.
My favorite example of peak communication in Scripture is the Visitation. Mary and Elizabeth, two great women of faith, recognize God at work in one another and pour out their hearts in greeting. Elizabeth marvels at Mary, asking, “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” And Mary responds with the glorious Magnificat—”My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:43, 46).
History gives us other examples of peak communication. When Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, the story is told he thought the speech was a flop because he received no applause. In fact, he had so touched his listeners that they remained in reverent silence. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the night before his most famous speech, is said to have written some lines with the refrain “I have a dream” then scratched them out. But, in the spontaneity of the moment, he reinserted those lines, bequeathing to us a poetic cry that echoes every time we consider the history of civil rights in this country.
So what does this have to do with apologetics? First, consider again television as the dominant force in our media culture. Its emotional hooks can give the appearance of reaching us, perhaps as deeply as level two. In some rare instances that might be true. But an entire industry exists—soap operas—whose sole function is to create characters about whom viewers can gossip. I recall being at lunch once with my family and wanting to cover my son’s ears to shield him from the sordid conversation at a nearby table. It only made me angrier when I realized that these people were talking about the lives of soap opera characters. Television gives us a smorgasbord of lives we can enter vicariously. It plays with our emotions and fills our minds and hearts with rubbish.
Wait a minute, you say. So television is trashy and superficial. No news there. What in the world does it have to do with our mission as Catholic apologists? Well, I have a theory that I stumbled upon after reading a description of hypnosis as staring into a bright light in a relaxed state, receiving a steady stream of suggestions. That sure sounds like a description of watching television, doesn’t it? Any parent who has ever tried to call the kids to the supper table while their eyes are locked trance-like on Big Bird and Cookie Monster has witnessed the similarity.
Consider the fact that since roughly 1980, the major television networks have watched their share of all viewers drop from nearly one hundred percent to only about fifty percent. What has happened to TV advertising revenues in that same period of time? They continue to reach record levels. In the late 1990s advertisers continued to pay the networks increases of more than ten percent a year despite the fact that their commercials were reaching a smaller audience. Why? Because no other advertising medium is more effective than a thirty-second spot repeated a few times to couch potatoes slumped in a trance. Remember that the next time some TV spokesman tries to argue that his network’s programming has no effect on the behavior of the viewing public: All their revenue depends on the very fact that what they show influences behavior.
Here’s the point: Our rivals in the popular culture have at their disposal an extremely powerful tool. How then do Christians compete for the hearts and minds of our brothers and sisters in order to win them over to Christ and engage them in helping to build his Kingdom? Granted there is EWTN, the Catholic channel as it were, and it offers outstanding preaching and teaching in the faith. It is developing a news presence and features a limited number of quality theatrical productions. But what EWTN lacks, and what draws and influences the greatest audience, is serial programming of drama and comedy. Only when Catholic television competes with Friends and The Sopranos will it claim to have fully matured.
With an eye to the way television works to win and hold its audience, I offer a number of suggestions for an apologist to go about bringing the Gospel to today’s unevangelized audience:
Touch the heart. Apologetics cannot be a purely intellectual exercise. The apologist must reveal his or her own cares and concerns and demonstrate how the gospel addresses them in a real way that popular culture cannot and will not. Never underestimate the power of firsthand personal testimony.
Tell stories. While your own testimony is key, the stories of others paths to conversion are also essential. That is the part of the power of periodicals such as this one and other fine Catholic publications: They arm us with the best ammunition. God has given us a love of stories. Isn’t it the case that when you walk away from a fine presentation, what you remember best are the stories?
Shift gears. The best dramas include some real laughs; the best comedies have real tension. If a speaker says everything with great urgency, then nothing stands out; if he hammers point after point, the audience throws up defenses to stop getting hammered. A strong presentation will have soft points; a wise apologist will be witty, warm, personal and personable, self-effacing, and make the effort to touch on a wide range of emotions not by sensationalizing and falling into the false emotionalism of the pop culture but by being genuine.
Walk and talk Oprah-style. In an often-quoted study published in 1972, Dr. Albert Mehrabian determined only seven percent of a message’s emotional content comes from the words themselves, thirty-eight percent comes from the vocal intonation, and fifty-five percent is body language (see Mehrabian’s book Silent Messages, 77).
Every bit of your person is communicating, which is why I believe it is crucial to walk out toward your audience and let them see your whole body. Don’t hang out behind lecterns or cling to written notes. Today’s political candidates have learned to come out from behind the podium to reach people in a more direct fashion. This also explains why television is so much more powerful an emotional medium than print, the Internet, or even radio: It gives the appearance of full human communication. The apologist can outdo it, however, by delivering not the mere appearance of real goods but the real goods themselves.
Know your stuff. You might be tempted to skimp on preparation if the actual content is only seven percent of the emotional communication, but excellent preparation gives you the confidence and command of the material that translates into powerful, comfortable, reassuring vocal quality and body language.
Challenge the audience. Television teaches instant gratification, which is about as far as one can get from Christ’s call to take up your cross and follow him. It cannot be enough for us to convince our fellows that the gospel is right—the way to make it endure in their lives is to get them busy in spreading it. An excellent first step is convincing them to turn off the television. Once upon a time I was required to know the prime time programming schedule by heart. Now I haven’t a clue. Need I tell you which state has been better for my relationship with my Lord, my wife, and my children? Once we have that time freed up, we can get busy in the new evangelization.
Love your audience. In the end there are but three things, Paul tells us, and the greatest of these is charity. You can get people worked up by harping on what’s wrong, but you can draw them to Christ only with love. And love never expresses itself in a negative manner. If we stoop to speaking uncharitably, the opportunity to convince a listener of the good news slips away from us.
Pray. Then leave it to the Holy Spirit. Okay, that’s obvious. It is also indispensable. No matter what any of us do, the Holy Spirit handles the real work of conversion. If we ever manage to live up to our calling as Christians and reach people in a way that gets them to turn off HBO and turns them on to Christ, it will be because we have made ourselves instruments in his hands. A priest friend of mine explained the process of evangelization: We do two percent of the work, the Holy Spirit does ninety-eight percent. But, he noted, the Spirit can do so only if we give our two percent.
When I worked in television, the part of my job that seemed the easiest but in fact was the most difficult was talking into a studio camera as if I was speaking to an actual human being. I think it is a gift—almost a spooky one if someone is skilled at doing so. For most apologists, we have the advantage of dealing with people in an authentic way, one on one, face to face. We are not the mere projection of signals from a television antenna; we are the projection of Christ’s love in the world. We carry out the great commission. Let us do so in a manner befitting the message.