Gospel Music Channel is TV’s fastest-growing cable network

Only a few thousand families in Tennessee were able to see the Gospel Music Channel when it debuted less than four years ago.

Now it’s television’s fastest-growing cable network – available in some 40 million homes, more than a third of the nation.

It reaches a milestone tonight when it carries live coverage of the annual Dove Awards for gospel music.

Charley Humbard, co-founder and president of the Gospel Music Channel, attributes its success in part to a lesson learned from his father, the late televangelist Rex Humbard.

The elder Humbard embraced inspirational music of all forms; June Carter and Johnny Cash, Mahalia Jackson, Andrae Crouch and Amy Grant all performed on his show.

Similarly, the Gospel Music Channel plays the gospel sounds of black churches, edgy Christian rock and rap, mainstream contemporary Christian pop and even Latin gospel music, Charley Humbard says.

Radio station owners typically recoil from presenting so many forms of music, and some in the industry believed the Gospel Music Channel was making a mistake.

Instead, the network has been accepted by fans of all forms of inspirational music, Humbard says.

“We like to say in here, ‘Multiple styles, one message,’ ” he says.

Humbard is a former executive at Discovery, where he worked on networks passionately devoted to such interests as health and aviation. He joined with a former Turner executive, Brad Siegel, to begin the Gospel Music Channel.

Within six months of raising money for the network, they were on the air. That was the easy part.

“You have to have a totally unique programming concept and be able to prove the demand of an audience in order to be able to get in the door and talk to cable operators,” says Siegel. “Cable operators will tell you that they don’t want to watch any more networks.”

Cable systems have limited space to add new networks and are much more interested now in high-definition or on-demand channels, says Jack Myers, editor and publisher of the industry news source jackmyers.com.

As an independent company, the Gospel Music Channel doesn’t have the muscle of big media conglomerates that often force systems to accept a new channel as part of a larger deal.

What it has to offer are true believers. A study of more than 100 emerging networks ranked Gospel Music Channel No. 1 in the connection its viewers feel toward the channel, Myers says.

“Once they get a viewer, they keep them,” he says.

That success – especially a deal with DirecTV that made the network available in 16 million more homes just last month – was noticed by the Gospel Music Association, which presents the annual Dove Awards, the Grammys of gospel.

The additional audience made the awards show interested in moving to the network. In past years the awards were syndicated and aired later on tape, says John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association.

“They have actually surprised me in that it’s better than I expected it would be,” Styll says. “Their on-air look is as professional as anything I’ve seen on television.”

The Gospel Music Channel features a different style of inspirational music each night, like rock and rap on Fridays and soulful gospel on Wednesdays.

Each evening has “Faith & Fame,” a biography series, and “Front Row Live,” concerts produced especially for the network. A new concert premieres every Saturday night.

Like any self-respecting music channel, it has its own “American Idol” knockoff. The third season of “Gospel Dreams” premieres June 1.

Most importantly, Humbard says, the network is family-friendly.

“I want to know that every time I tune into this channel it’s safe for my 8-year-old to watch,” he says.