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The CBN headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va., consists of three massive white pillared buildings where some 4,000 Roberston employees work amid strict security (for example: coded cards to unlock doors). The buildings house not only studios but CBN University, which enrolls 715 graduate students and is adding a law school acquired free from Oral Roberts University.
CBN's viewership has tripled since 1981, when Robertson switched from an all-religion schedule to a family entertainment approach, combining Christian shows with wholesome reruns (Flipper, Father Knows Best), westerns, old movies and game shows. Two weeks ago the network premiered CBN News Tonight, a regular evening newscast produced in Washington, with special emphasis on right-wing issues.
Robertson's spiritual hub is The 700 Club, which runs without ads on the CBN cable system and also pays $20 million a year to appear on broadcast outlets in 185 cities. Hosted in low-key style on a living-room set by Robertson and Ben Kinchlow, who is black, the program has featured interviews with such guests as Anwar Sadat, F. Lee Bailey, Mr. T and the last three U.S. Presidents, interspersed with inspirational film clips and reports in TV- magazine format. Robertson's political commentary is also a staple, whether on domestic issues like abortion ("We are offering up 1 1/2 million babies a year upon the altar of sensuality and selfishness") or international topics like the Nicaraguan contras. (The U.S. has "a moral obligation," Robertson maintains, to support "freedom fighters" who battle "satanic" Communism.)
During the programs, 800 numbers continually flash onscreen, encouraging viewers to phone in their requests, comments, prayers or pledges. (The show's name derives from an early crisis when, in order to stay on the air, it needed 700 donors to send $10 a month.) CBN just passed American Airlines as the nation's heaviest user of WATS telephone lines. On-camera operators take the messages, sometimes suggesting local help and often relaying news of miracle cures for Robertson and Kinchlow to pass along to the audience. Kinchlow, 49, has known a miracle or two himself. He was drifting and embittered until "Jesus changed me from the inside." Now he is a CBN vice president. One of Robertson's four children, Timothy, 31, is another.
Nowadays The 700 Club is increasingly left in Kinchlow's hands as Robertson crisscrosses the country in the company's BAC One-Eleven jet. With his enterprises--and his political prospects--building up momentum, Robertson has less time to spend with his wife Dede in a university-owned $420,000 mansion on the CBN campus. When he is home Robertson usually is awake at sunrise, studies the Bible for an hour, jogs two miles and perhaps takes a ride on one of his four horses before going to his studios. It is a country gentleman's life-style, which befits a blue-blooded Virginian who counts two Presidents, William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison, in the family tree.