TABLETS: Moses (played by William Houston, right) tells Joshua (Sean Knopp) about the new law in town. (AP)
TABLETS: Moses (played by William Houston, right) tells Joshua (Sean Knopp) about the new law in town. (AP)
The heavenly ratings of History’s “The Bible” caught most TV execs by surprise — but not Tom Forman.
The executive producer of GSN’s hit series “The American Bible Challenge,” which incorporates biblical history into a game show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, says there’s an untapped audience for faith-based programming — and that it’s taken Hollywood too long to embrace this.
“Fundamentally, 75 percent of the US identifies itself as Christian and is massively under-represented on TV,” says Forman. “Prior to ‘The American Bible Challenge’ and ‘The Bible,’ you had pretty serious Sunday-morning-style religious programming, but . . . no one was out there producing spiritual entertainment.
“TV has been slow to catch on to the phenomenon started a few years back with movies like ‘Fireproof,’ when everyone said, ‘Look, there’s an audience for Christian content on films and TV,’ ” he says.
“Now TV is crashing into that space . . . and it’s mind-boggling that it didn’t jump into this before.”
“The Bible,” a 10-part miniseries executive produced by “Survivor” guru Mark Burnett and his wife, Roma Downey, snared a cable record 13.1 million viewers in its premiere last Sunday night — and is now likely to spawn a slew of TV imitators, Forman says.
“No good idea on TV goes uncopied, but having said that, I think if Hollywood attempts to cynically cash in on people’s religious beliefs, it will go very badly for everyone,” he says.
So what does he think of “The Bible”?
“I like it, but I think they’ve got their work cut out for them in bringing this epic story to TV,” he says. “I’m not sure that it ultimately matters if they do a good job or not — because it’s going to find its audience whether it’s good or not.”
Forman says “The American Bible Challenge” was developed by GSN; the show premiered to a network-record 1.7 million viewers last season (its second season premieres March 21).
“GSN saw a giant, underserved segment of the audience that would respond if we could make a show a certain way,” he says.
“This is the only game show with multiple biblical consultants in the booth beside me.
“It’s really important to us to have people who know the subject matter alongside TV producers who know how to make a fun game show.”