From one tiny TV station, he built a media empire that now includes the Family Channel cable network, which currently reaches into 57 million households. The viewing audience for Robertson's weekday 700 Club program is estimated at one million. About a third of the program's content is overtly political. Throughout the 1980s, Robertson used the 700 Club to lobby for U.S. military aid to the Contras and to the death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala. Now he uses his network to lobby against gay rights and to get out the vote for Republicans.
Christian radio is an even more pervasive medium.
There are about 1,200 full-time Christian radio stations in the United States. KFAX in the Bay area plays James Dobson's interview show twice daily along with the daily Concerned Women for America broadcast, which in only four years on the air has built an estimated audience of 500,000. Host Beverly LaHaye routinely uses the program to get her listeners to lobby Congress. Christian radio is popular because it gives people emotional sustenance along with the news, traffic reports, and what they need to know to be politically active. It is the coherence of the Christian right's cultural institutions and ideological message that makes millions of people want to participate.