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Up until now, the year’s big cable-ratings story has been the ever-growing success of zombie drama The Walking Dead on AMC. Sunday night, though, History channel had the highest-rated scripted drama on cable for the year, for the beginning of a story in which only one main character rises from the dead, and that not until nearly the end. The first two hours of History’s Mark Burnett miniseries adaptation of The Bible scored 13.1 million viewers, more than any fiction cable show of the year–and, as the New York Times notes, dwarfing anything on NBC for the past month. (The...

'The Bible' miniseries produced by the History Channel is a disappointment for any family hoping for a new way to share the Bible's stories with their children. 'The Bible' miniseries, not altogether surprising given the History Channel's relentless ratings focus, sensationalizes the Bible's stories. Angel ninjas? Really? The Bible, in addition to being the basis for various religious beliefs, is a fascinating historical conglomeration of stories that can teach us about the customs, times, travails, and conditions of the ancient Middle East that create a social context for modern day news, like the plague of locusts currently hitting Egypt. However...

Sure, it’s easy to criticize Hollywood, but try to remember that the entertainment industry today is an intellectually demanding environment, fraught with cognitively challenging, even intractable, questions, like, to take one recent example: How can the cable mini-series “The Bible” be such a ratings hit when there is no audience for overtly religious entertainment programming? According to the latest Nielsens, released Tuesday, Sunday night’s telecast of “The Bible,” produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for basic cable’s History channel, managed to attract more viewers than anything on broadcast network NBC … during the entire week. The second...

I am undecided about it.

The History Channel's "The Bible" miniseries once again raked in the ratings this past weekend, drawing in 10.8 million total viewers for its second episode, thus making it the most popular program in all of television on Sunday night. Although the historical miniseries was down 18 percent in total viewership from its premiere on March 3, it still managed to attract 3.2 million adults, ages 18-49, and 3.8 million adults, ages 25-54, according to Deadline. These high numbers made the new miniseries the most watched television program on Sunday from 8 p.m.-10 p.m. According to Channel Guide Magazine, over 50...

Sure, it’s easy to criticize Hollywood, but try to remember that the entertainment industry today is an intellectually demanding environment, fraught with cognitively challenging, even intractable, questions, like, to take one recent example: How can the cable mini-series “The Bible” be such a ratings hit when there is no audience for overtly religious entertainment programming? According to the latest Nielsens, released Tuesday, Sunday night’s telecast of “The Bible,” produced by husband-and-wife team Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for basic cable’s History channel, managed to attract more viewers than anything on broadcast network NBC … during the entire week ...

Last Sunday, the first installment of History’s five-part miniseries The Bible beat everything on television with a massive 13.1 million viewers, making it cable’s most-watched entertainment telecast this year. For producer Mark Burnett, who worked on the ten-hour special with wife Roma Downey, the success of The Bible isn’t all that surprising. “It will be, over the next 40 or 50 years, the most watched thing that Roma and I have ever made,” he told EW, quite confidently, back in January. At the time, Burnett gushed about shooting the series. “I really believe what I’m going to tell you right...

Dramatic and conventional in its portrayal... that's how I characterize the History Channel's presentation of Genesis and Exodus. Did it present Abraham's Horite people faithfully? Not at all. This was a rehash of old interpretations that fail to tell the whole story. In other words, a missed opportunity. The program clearly stirred interest because after it aired this blog had over 300 reads in less than 30 minutes. The higher traffic continued the following day. People arrived from different search engines with questions like "Who was Abraham's firstborn son?" and "What color was Abraham?" If you watched the program, try...

Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly, who is writing an upcoming book titled “Killing Jesus,” proclaimed on his program Wednesday night that “a lot of the Bible is allegorical,” and the New Testament Gospels contradict themselves. O’Reilly made the remarks during an interview with “Touched by an Angel” star Roma Downey and her husband Mark Burnett, executive producers of “The Bible” TV miniseries which begins this Sunday night on the History Channel.

My wife and I enjoyed a special blessing yesterday. We sat in the front row at Saddleback Church in SoCal where Pastor Rick Warren played host to Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, husband and wife producers of the new ten-part miniseries, “The Bible,” which premiers tonight on the History Channel. Mark has brought such well-known reality shows to television as “Survivor,” “Celebrity Apprentice,” “The Voice,” “The Job” and “Shark Tank.” Roma is best known for her role as Monica, on the popular television series “Touched by an Angel.” Many, I imagine, had an inkling that Roma might be a Christian....

This is one of the reasons we created "The Bible," a 10-part miniseries premiering March 3 on the History Channel that dramatizes key stories from Scriptures. It will encourage audiences around the world to open or reopen Bibles to understand and enjoy these stories...

Della Reese says that she, Roma Downey and John Dye were very much "a family unit" during CBS' long-running series Touched by an Angel. But that family suffered a heavy loss with Dye's death at age 47 this week. "Roma, John and I were a family unit. We worked together every day for seven years," Reese tells The Hollywood Reporter. "We acted like a family. We lived like a family. I felt what he felt." "He was my Angel Boy, that's what I called him." The actor died from a heart attack Monday at his home in San Francisco.