Mobilising the Christian $

Bought The Guardian today as I like the 'in praise of...' section at the end of the leader column and found a significant new development in religious marketing at the bottom of the front page. Apparently Rupert Murdoch's Fox Movie Studio are starting a new division, FoxFaith, to make up to a dozen Christian movies per year for cinema release, primarily to the US market. The full story is here.

Best quote of the day from one Laura Neutzling, vice-president of marketing for Fox's distributors:

"There hasn't been a great one-stop place for Christians to buy great family films that they can trust won't be offensive."

Perish the thought that Christians in the US might be offended by something they watch; Jerry Springer - the Opera is probably now controversial enough to be avoided, but according to those fine people at the Childcare Action Project, Mr & Mrs Smith (to take a random example) is very dangerous. Personally, I find The X Factor an offensive piece of TV. Mugging morons gurning at Sharon Osborne and Simon Cowell hoping for a big break... ugggg. I would have complained to ITV but (a) I don't want to hurt the feelings of people who sincerely love this televisual masterpiece, (b) I'm too lazy to complain (you get that way when you travel on one railways), (c) at least it doesn't have Noel Edmonds or Jim Davidson in it.

Anyway, this discussion of offensiveness and the religious sensibility is leading us to a specific story which has been very hot news over the last 7 days or so and I will hand over to Hal Berstram to talk about it in the next post, as he's very bored with just sport to deal with - there's not much footy in midweek and he doesn't understand other sports apart from rugby, which I'm reliably informed by the guy who does BHaPPY is "a piece of shite." So needless to say, we will be featuring a good share of it when the Six Nations kicks off in the new year...