A long story about my time marketing in the Christian entertainment industry.

When I worked for a Christian entertainment company, handling their marketing one of the first things I did was I divided up the top performing programs based on theological appeal.

TD Jakes/Osteen Movies - Word of Faith

Hillsong Worship - Charismatic

Answers in Genesis - Reformed / Homeschooling

Kirk Cameron - Broad Evangelical.

Movies with Female Pastors - Liberal Christian Denominations

and so on and so on.

I matched programming to audiences who would actually like the content. And I warned about advertising Hillsong films to John MacArthur audience.

The point was to not waste advertising dollars promoting films to specific theological categories who would hate whoever was in it. You don't promote Charismatic stuff or Female pastors in a movie to the Grace To You audience.

I did this off the top of my head in like 30 minutes.

For most people who have a knowledge of Christianity in America, this seems like a no-brainer.

But the executives were completely baffled.

They asked me where I got this data, how much I paid for it and then asked how I knew for certain this data was valid.

I didn't really have an answer for that because it was such common sense knowledge to me growing up in evangelicalism, working with Way of the Master and Wretched TV, and I just came from running the studio of one of the largest online apologetics ministries. It was just deeply engrained in me.

Because there was no objective studies or verified data and analysis I could point to, other than my gut, they never wound up using it.

Just be aware, that the people who are running Christian entertainment don't know much about your denominational preferences.

Because they don't know these things, they have to make sure that everything they make appeals to either as many Evangelicals as possible, or appeals to a lucrative pre-existing market.

This is why Christian entertainment is as inoffensive as possible. Because those at the top don't understand basic Theology 101 niche's. So instead of focusing on valuable niche content, it has to go broad as possible.

Even though it would save tons of money by not broadly advertising niche content to people not within those niche's, there is no knowledge of how to do that from the top.

The Christian entertainment executives are not knowledgeable about Evangelicalism and the differences. They don't know why a person who likes John MacArthur is not interested in a documentary on charismatic gifts, but would be interested in Answers in Genesis content.

So millions of dollars in advertising revenue is wasted every year advertising to the wrong people.