{"id":2774,"date":"2009-04-28T11:58:24","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T11:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html"},"modified":"2009-04-28T11:58:24","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T11:58:24","slug":"heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html","title":{"rendered":"A Good Read: &#8216;The Last TV Evangelist&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"lasttvevangelist.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/87\/import\/imgs\/lasttvevangelist.jpg\" width=\"128\" height=\"200\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span>There&#8217;s a new book out that may provide some of the most compelling reading in years for those who are interesting in spirituality, pop culture, and faith-based television.<br \/>\n&#8220;The Last TV Evangelist&#8221; is authored by Phil Cooke, a veteran producer who has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Network. His work has been profiled in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal.<br \/>\nHis 2008 book, &#8220;Branding Faith,&#8221; has influenced the way many non-profit and religious organizations use the media to tell their story. He&#8217;s lectured at Yale and UCLA. His Christian media influence has been extensive and he raises some compelling points in his book.<br \/>\nMr. Cooke claims that &#8220;religious radio and TV has built massive networks, launched global organizations, and generated billions of dollars in donations,&#8221; and that &#8220;it has allowed Christianity to reach more people in this century alone than the rest of history combined.<br \/>\nBut he also claims that &#8220;sex and money scandals, political controversies, and the prosperity gospel have taken their toll on the perception of Christians in the culture.&#8221;<br \/>\nI don&#8217;t think those are revolutionary points, but I do think the prospect of notifying the mainstream media&#8211;and the public&#8211;of this obvious fact could be a breakthrough in terms of many peoples&#8217; perception of God as translated through media outlets.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nAfter more than three decades of experience in both faith-based and secular media, Mr. Cooke is now exploring what it will take to connect to a new generation &#8220;before the entire industry experiences total collapse.&#8221; For too long, the media has been able to dismiss a generation of Christians under the umbrella of a few figureheads like Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, Paul Crouch and others. But that kind of simpletonism is now soon to be behind us and &#8220;The Last TV Evangelist&#8221; will&#8211;in my opinion&#8211;increase the speed of the culture&#8217;s recognition.<br \/>\nNo more TV Evangelists? How wonderful! I love the Christian message, but I&#8217;ve never loved how its been portrayed by those who speak for The One I believe in but with a language and style that I&#8217;ve never recognized.<br \/>\nIf you&#8217;re interested finding out more about the book or viewing a video stream <a href=\"http:\/\/www.conversantlife.com\/philcooke\" target=\"_blank\">visit ConversantLife.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a new book out that may provide some of the most compelling reading in years for those who are interesting in spirituality, pop culture, and faith-based television. &#8220;The Last TV Evangelist&#8221; is authored by Phil Cooke, a veteran producer who has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Network. His work has&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,7,4,1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-entertainment","category-pop-culture","category-television","category-trends"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Good Read: &#039;The Last TV Evangelist&#039;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Good Read: &#039;The Last TV Evangelist&#039;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There&#8217;s a new book out that may provide some of the most compelling reading in years for those who are interesting in spirituality, pop culture, and faith-based television. &#8220;The Last TV Evangelist&#8221; is authored by Phil Cooke, a veteran producer who has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Network. His work has&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-28T11:58:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/lasttvevangelist.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Douglas Howe\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Good Read: 'The Last TV Evangelist'","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Good Read: 'The Last TV Evangelist'","og_description":"There&#8217;s a new book out that may provide some of the most compelling reading in years for those who are interesting in spirituality, pop culture, and faith-based television. &#8220;The Last TV Evangelist&#8221; is authored by Phil Cooke, a veteran producer who has appeared on MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and the Fox News Network. His work has&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2009-04-28T11:58:24+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/lasttvevangelist.jpg"}],"author":"Douglas Howe","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html","name":"A Good Read: 'The Last TV Evangelist'","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/lasttvevangelist.jpg","datePublished":"2009-04-28T11:58:24+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-28T11:58:24+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/a05dabea7186e9c2898a41a6713aa98a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/lasttvevangelist.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/imgs\/lasttvevangelist.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2009\/04\/heres-a-good-read-the-last-tv.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Good Read: &#8216;The Last TV Evangelist&#8217;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/a05dabea7186e9c2898a41a6713aa98a","name":"Douglas Howe","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7e3\/7e32c99b36f419c4c074635d65150806x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7e3\/7e32c99b36f419c4c074635d65150806x96.jpg","caption":"Douglas Howe"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/dhowe"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}