His strengthened faith prompted him to sell his family’s furniture and other belongings, and donate the proceeds to Korean orphans. He did this while his wife and children were visiting family in Ohio. She was furious. Years later, she offered advice to women in similar situations: “God can be your husband,” she said.
Birth of a network
Mr. Robertson moved the family into a rat-infested parsonage next to a brothel in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He was a minister in that community when his mother told him that a small UHF antenna television station in Portsmouth, Virginia, was for sale. According to his account, he spoke to God, who advised him to offer $37,000, far less than the $300,000 the seller wanted.
His offer was finally accepted, and Mr. Robertson pooled cash from family and friends to start in 1960 what he boldly called the Christian Broadcasting Network.
It went on the air on October 1, 1961 as WYAH-TV, a name taken from the Hebrew word for God, Yahweh. An early fundraising campaign involved asking 700 people to pledge $10 a month each, a huge amount for the time and place. His request was granted. In 1966, this success led to “The 700 Club,” which became Mr. Robertson. The network soon had a game show and a daytime drama, “Another Life,” which the station promoted as “the soap with hope.”
Mr. Robertson avoided the fire-and-brimstone approach of TV preachers like Jimmy Swaggart and the hot-shot ways of Jerry Falwell. He was doing a couple of PBS-style telethons a year, instead of constantly asking for money.
“Television is a mass communications vehicle,” said Mr. Robertson in a 1995 interview with CNN. “It’s not a church service.”
Mr. Robertson became one of the first broadcasters to syndicate programs nationally and one of the first to use satellite transmission, starting one of the first basic cable networks of any kind.
