The Mainstreaming of Christian Music Videos

Contemporary Christian music has been called the fastest growing form of popular music in the United States today (Dawidoff 42). While traditional gospel music has remained confined within "the individual house of worship, connected to a loose national mosaic of churches" (Ennis 27), the new sound has borrowed from secular styles including hard rock, rap, country, and pop to reach a much larger and more mainstream audience. Already a fixture in a nationwide network of Christian bookstores (Adams A18), contemporary Christian music is becoming more available through secular record stores, retailers such as K-Mart and Wal-Mart, and the well-known Columbia House mail-order club. A key factor in this wider availability has been the entrance of major record companies into the Christian field. Over the past several years mainstream labels such as BMG and EMI have purchased Christian labels, and companies including Virgin and Elektra have signed Christian bands to their rosters (Price, "With" 34). This interest from mainstream investors has enabled contemporary Christian music to garner revenues of some $500 million a year (Bates A18) and to grow at a rate in which the genre is projected to account for 10 to 13 percent of American popular music sales by the end of the century (Dawidoff 42).

Given the growing interest in contemporary Christian music among music producers and consumers alike, it is not surprising that the genre now has its own cable television channel. In March 1993 a service called "Z Music Television" was made available to cable operators; and, owing largely to an investment made 14 months later by Gaylord Entertainment Company (at that time the Nashville-based owner of Country Music Television and the Nashville Network, which now belong to CBS), the channel subsequently has developed to the point where it is available in over 27 million U.S. households (Tobenkin 44). Like the secular MTV network in its early years, Z Music presents a fast-paced and continuous blend of music videos, advertisements, promotions, and brief features about singers and bands. As the network's manager of marketing points out, "A lot of people perceive something Christian as the Jim and Tammy Bakkers of the world of evangelical Christianity. We are musically positive, yet we look like MTV" (qtd. in Katz 48). Although there are numerous other regional Christian music video programs, Z Music is the only national outlet; and most industry observers agree that this broader reach has allowed the network to succeed in "cornering the Christian music market" (Katz 48).

Because cable television networks like Z Music derive over half of their revenues from sales of advertising time (Head, Sterling, and Schofield 205), they continually seek ways to attract the relatively massive audiences that advertisers find most desirable. Similarly, the record companies who finance production of the music videos shown on such networks would like to have their videos viewed as widely as possible, for this might result in higher sales of the compact discs and cassettes that the videos are created to promote. With these aims in mind the management of Z Music recently announced that it was undertaking a campaign to "reposition" the network and "broaden the appeal of contemporary Christian Music" (Price, "Christian" 89). A key part of this effort has been to encourage those within the cable-casting industry to reconsider their assumptions about the channel. For example, a 9 October 1995 advertisement for the network appearing in the trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable makes references to "Christian music" and "the world's only 24-hour contemporary Christian music television network" (51-52). But in advertisements in more recent issues of the same publication the word Christian is not used; instead the ads highlight the "objection-free (NO sex, NO violence, NO customer complaints)" nature of Z Music programming (24 June 1996, 43) and speak of "music with a positive vibe, the nation's newest and fastest growing format" (2 Sept. 1996, 39). Along these same lines, Graham Barnard, Z Music's manager of programming, recently summed up the channel without mentioning a religious dimension:

This is the only network where you can hear music like this - you won't hear it elsewhere because of a lot of editorial decisions. But the music is still in step with what you would hear on VH1 and, in the case of Generation Z, on MTV. But you will notice something is missing, images that are not wholesome - we leave out the violence, raw sex appeal and disrespect for authority. (qtd. in Tobenkin 44)

Thus the channel appears to be downplaying the religious roots of contemporary Christian music in the hopes that cable television operators and potential advertisers will perceive Z Music as something of a less controversial version of mainstream rock video networks like MTV and VH1. If this effort is successful, the channel might become more widely available - enabling it to increase its advertising revenues and promote contemporary Christian music to new listeners.

But if the programmers of Z Music wish to retain the audience base on which their network has been built, they must be careful to avoid diluting the Christian nature of the channel too severely; for it is a distinct religious thrust that has always separated contemporary Christian music from other forms of popular music. In describing the industry's Dove Awards, for example, a journalist notes that although the range of styles recognized in the annual ceremony rivals that of the secular Grammy Awards, what brings the different types of music together are lyrics that share a "sharp focus on theology" (Adams A18). Don Cusic, a longtime observer of the gospel industry, explains the importance of this lyrical focus by pointing out that Christian performers see themselves as ministers first and artists/entertainers second. To these performers music is important only insofar as it can be used to convey messages designed to convert new Christians or reinforce the beliefs of those already committed to the religion:

The rationale of copying secular music is that, in order to attract new believers, you must first give audiences a taste of what they already know. Thus, a heavy metal fan will be inclined to listen to Christian heavy metal music and, through hearing the gospel message in the lyrics, be convinced and converted to Christianity. There is also the notion of "entertainment for the saints." In other words, Christians want entertainment but want that entertainment to contain the message in the lyrics congruent with their own beliefs. Hence, Contemporary Christian music. (Cusic 129-30)

As the president of the Gospel Music Association Bruce Koblish says, contemporary Christian music listeners expect "to hear music that is not only positive, but has a strong message. That's the essence of our music" (qtd. in Price 36). In attempting to broaden the appeal of their network and the music featured on it, then, the programmers of Z Music face the challenge of presenting videos that can satisfy the expectations of Christians while attracting viewers who might be less interested in religious messages and symbols.

Z Music has adopted specific rhetorical strategies to meet the challenge of moving contemporary Christian music further into the mainstream of American popular culture. In particular, Z Music programmers select videos that appeal to the musical tastes of both Christian and secular music fans. This is facilitated by the fact that music video is a media form better suited to encouraging moods and evoking impressions than conveying meanings. The makers of videos shown regularly on Z Music take advantage of this quality to broaden the range of interpretations that viewers might associate with songs that contain religious images. Through the use of three distinct presentational strategies - what I refer to as "unequivocally religious," "moderately religious," and "ambiguously religious" - they encourage viewers to associate varying degrees of spirituality with the performers featured in the clips shown on the Z channel. Thus videos that some viewers might perceive as being "Christian" might be experienced by others as being "positive" or "uplifting." In this manner, contemporary Christian music can begin to reach listeners who might not have been a part of its original Christian fan base.

The Nature of Music Video