Prime-Time Religion For C4

Channel 4 is to launch a prime-time religious series, ‘Witness’. It will feature a wide range of subjects, including neo-Nazis meeting a survivor from Auschwitz and cannibalism in the South Pacific. It intends to avoid organised religion and will concentrate instead on personal belief.

Nicholas Fraser, the head of religion at Channel 4 has said that the BBC centres on outdated religion and mainly the Church of England, and that ITV now only puts religious programmes in the “dump slot” of Sunday mornings. While he recognises that there is stil reluctance to watch programmes of an overtly religious nature, he believes that there is still a demand for such programmes. This is in direct contrast to the reduction of religious output by IT V and BBC; last year Highway was replaced by Blockbusters and Hollywood Films, and the BBC has moved its entire religious department to Manchester.

A measure of the confidence that C4 has in the programme is that it is to go out at peak mid-week viewing, at 9pm on Thursdays. This time at present on C4 has an audience of almost 2.5million.