Transcript of CS#80: Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com

Transcript of Interview with Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

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Welcome to the Catholic spotlight….
This is the catholic spotlight the broadcast where we talk about what is new, cool and exciting in the catholic market place, I am you host Chris Cash, director of e-commerce from catholiccompany.com your source for all your catholic needs.

And today in the spotlight we have Michael Voris or is a Vorist?

Michael Voris: Voris

Chris Cash: pardon me for not being able to speak properly here. So for real catholic TV. com which is an excellent new on line source for Emmy award winning quality programming. Michael great to have your on the on the show.

Michael Voris: well, thanks very much, it is good to be here Chris. So Michael, can you tell our listeners just a little bit about what real catholic TV is doing. Right now and what kind of brought about this idea? Doing an online television network, in the catholic market.

Michael Voris: well, I think one of the things that we need to take a look at is, wherever the technology is at any given point in history, the church needs to use that that technology to the fullest advantage to be able to be able to spread the gospel. In Jesus’ day, he was standing on the mountain or standing on the boat.
In the middle ages, it was transcribing, and the monks were making copies of the sacred scriptures and once the printing press happened it was publishing. When the radio came online it was radio programming. TV, you know we had dish machine now the angelic network you know, now the really, really big, big push is the internet, as a matter of fact it is not even a push anymore, there are, out of 2004 more, Americans spend , Americans spend more hours on line then they spend watching television.

Chris Cash: Well, I hear, from a lot of, a lot of people with teenagers that their kids spend a lot more time watching you tube nowadays than any regular network programming.

Michael Voris: Oh…absolutely, absolutely, there is an any. Of course the broadcaster, broadcaster deal traditional with the CBS, NBC guys. very worried, things are fine for 5-10years from now, but till then, but once this demographic is thrown up and 5 or 10 years move on then all of a sudden you have the people being, the favorable advertising demographic age group would not be on television anymore, which obviously projects nothing but declining revenues for them, so what they have been doing, is putting a, making a presence for themselves online too.

You can go to CBS.com or ABC or whatever, and interestingly enough, the one company that, the one network that sort of really stands out in this is CBS. I feel they have got somebody out there who is kind of internet savvy or what but if you go to CBS.com; I have been watching and keeping an eye on them for about a year. About 8 months age they finally came up with, first of all they put all of their programming online so if you want to watch CSI which is the only thing that I ever watch and I watch it sporadically and you could watch the an episode of CSI virtually commercial free.

There is 2 or 3 breaks in it, there is one 30 second commercial. Besides from that, it does not take you an hour to watch that show now, it takes you 46minutes to watch it. And you can watch it whenever you want and you might reschedule your catholic TV, is I don’t have to, the only time I actually watch something which is like 1 in the morning, so the first thing that the network does is put everything online, all the programming online, then they started putting an archive of programs online, so if you are a star trek geek, you can go back and watch any episode from star trek you want from CBS.com. Then I noticed the shift happen they had on one of the pull down menu, you know, it was the shows menu. They had the prime time sports, drama, comedy, sit coms whatever. Then I noticed this one little opening on the far side, there was something called CBS.com originals , there was one show there , and I thought” That is strange-what is that “? And I clicked on it. It was a regular television program. Except the only place that you could watch it was at cbs online. And I watch one and that was about 8 months ago, I watched and the ensuing 8 months they had added about 4, 5, or 6 more programs, the only place that you could watch these things are online.

And just as they were wrapping up with that we were thinking here too, what is the best way to get programming out; you have two major costs, when you are talking about television and video production. You have the actual cost of the production which is sort of a one time thing it’s done, once you have paid for the program, you have it, it is always there. It always exists but then you have to distribute it and that is the real cost in television, that is where television stations and networks make all their money, in, you know, actually distributing the money.

But… Here you have a vehicle in the internet, where you can actually distribute programming for very, very very little cost; you have to be able to have the broad band to support it, a platform that can handle thousands or tens of thousands of users at the same time. But it is a relatively low per head cost. and we felt, “You know-lets do this ” lets put some programming so we already had a good amount of programming available to us of some other catholic programs we produced, in conjunction with a non-profit organization called St. Michael’s media, also votaries, we took that programming, produced some new programming and combined it all together and it is all there in real catholic tv.com, I have to tell you we have thousands of people who have already subscribed to this and think about this. We are very, excited about how this is going, it is pretty good. We can always do better but you know it is, we rolled out on labor day , we came out with our kit out of the blocks, just for the …. to concentrate on the election and all the catholic issues surrounding the election and now we are in the post election mode and just getting our footing together for that , and you know we are actually very…. we are taking this as a good thing. A very good thing. This is where the church needs to be right now. To be on the internet, because this is where the next generation of people are going to be and that’s where they are right now.

Chris Cash: you know, there is never ever going to be a time when good content is not going to be rewarded. Whether it is on the TV networks or on the internet or whatever, so I think this is the right time and the right direction to be going. Now, you mentioned, that there was a subscription involved, could you talk a little bit about, what your subscription service is and what things are available at no charge on your site as well.

Michael Voris: Sure, we have 2 different platforms, two different pages or two different channels, one is the free platform or the free page and the other is subscription page. We have on the free page, we do daily news, it’s for 7 or 8 minutes…..

Chris Cash: I heard your assistant say it was more like you called it “The daily rant”

Michael Voris: Oh yes! That is a different thing

Chris Cash: oh… that is a different segment, sorry!

Michael Voris: yes, we have a…. the free page is updated daily; we have a one minute piece on church history, whatever the day is. We have a one minute piece on the saint of the day. Then we have a rough 5 minutes piece on what you said the rant we call that the vortex and the grand tour, I guess. And we also have the daily newscast that is hosted by a fellow named Vic who is a sports caster here in the local Detroit market. At the ABC station, he is a very devout catholic and is thrilled to death to be involved with what we are doing here. So, we are first thrilled to death to have him here, so that is what you get on the free page. So the point of that is that it is short and sweet, give it a 5 minute newscast or 6 minute newscast, on something, on current stories or current events from a catholic perspective, which is not really…. unless you are going to be sitting down, and you know scavenging through the internet or subscribe to 20 different magazines and catholic news paper and you know, you do not have this stuff, readily at your finger tips, we certainly do not have them on a daily basis except for you know, you know situation here and there, you know, you can watch something on W Chan but you know it is not on every cable system in the country and not every catholic has cable.

You can listen to something on the radio but generally speaking, you have to be in your car, you are not going to sit in your car to listen to something. The internet is nice because you know…that is why we are on it… Right now, you can listen to whatever you want to, you can feed them, you can feed it to people on RSS Speed, you know there is all kinds of ways to get the message across. So the free page is set up for that, so that people can go to the internet and you know they are getting ready in the morning. They could log on and watch their daily news like, you know, what really happened, you know, oh, that happened! That happened in a church in Spain, oh, wait a second that new law that the British passed in their parliament and what does that do to the church over there, that sort of thing. Current events and how the church is impacted by those. The vortex piece which we call, loving called my daily rant

Chris Cash: Was not my words for right now!

Michael Voris: That is the in-house word for it

Chris Cash: I have just let the cat out of the bag

Michael Voris: yes, you always want the inside secrets. Now the point of that is to find a topic. And it is not difficult these days. There is topic to

C: There is plenty to rant about

Michael Voris: Oh there is, there absolutely is, you know, what should our…. you know where should our thoughts be heading, who should we be viewing this situation or that situation, the election or the, you know the piece of legislation or you know some pop culture, it does not matter, you know, the potential topics is infinite. So that is sort of a focus piece, I guess in a lot of people said it is kind of like a Bill Oreille except from a catholic perspective. which , I guess I will take as a compliment, he is the number one dude on cable TV so , I will relish that the moment I guess … yes… but that is all the free page stuff.
Now we have another page, for that all you have to do is register that is all you do, just go to realcatholictv.com and you just register, it is collecting demographic information, it is collecting your zip code and your age. That is what it is. That is it. Now, there is another page that has all kinds of programming, on it, beyond the news and the vortex and the minute of saint and the minute of history. This has an excellent programming on it there is thousands and thousands of hours of programming on it, that’s where it really has the heart of the site. there is programming that has a … there is a polygenic programming on there, there is a cathartically programming on there is devotional programming, we have a show called prayer kids to help people, help moms and dads with their younger children, maybe, you know 6 or 7 . We have actual younger children who are saying their prayers, so you know, you can just pop a little Sally or Johnny right in front of the computer, let them say the prayers along with our little kids, and you know, the words are scrolling by at the same time.

Chris Cash: That sounds like an awesome idea.

Michael Voris: Yes, you just pop them up there, sit there and let them watch it we got a show called moral compass, moral compass is an explanation, a very simple down to earth explanation of what the church teaches but more why the church teaches. Here is some explanation, why does the church constantly go on about abortion a blab bla well here is why. why does the church go o about stem cell…it is not just fuzzy Debbie there is a logic behind it and here is why….and it is really kind of any man, any man’s theology, approach that you can get this, it isn’t sophisticated high minded stuff. This is just for the facts ma’m thank you kind of stuff. We have another program for younger kids, so the youths… the youths probably won’t work, the high school to college crowd, maybe a little beyond. We call that show “In roads” and we just posted up our first episode that, that, just this past week. There is all kinds of attention allover the … like You tube, the blogs and everything else for that.

Really we are constantly getting…. “Hey, this is a great show”, this particular episode we recently started off with is the catholic music. catholic music from you know, catholic rock band, image, there is a great record label here, catholic record label here in southeastern Michigan and we got some interviews with them, went to a concert, sort of a different contract and audition there, it was just such a great piece.

You know, it is hosted by two young enthusiastic catholic guy and catholic girl and it is just a good piece. It is a good show. We have got another one called “the other view”. Which is as you might imagine has a sense of sticking it to the view crowd in New York and, you are sitting around all day and thinking why is it that every time you constantly turn on the TV it’s like , you know, if it is on network television and it is women it is pro-abortion and anti-church.

You know, it’s just that, you know what… they can’t speak for all women. They certainly can’t. So we got auditions here in the mid-summer time frame and got a cast of five women who shook down from that and they were very oh… how to say it…..very opinionated.

Chris Cash: do you have a token liberal to mirror their views

Michael Voris: Yes

Chris Cash: Sort of like a conservative

Michael Voris: No, no, no. There was an occasional, they get a little, they get a little occasional tough stuff, you know, 5 women, there has got to be an occasional dust up….

Chris Cash: Anybody, you are going to have an occasional dust up. Especially if they are very opinionated.

Michael Voris: Yes, they are very opinionated and they are not shy with their opinions either, you know, not only are they are opinionated. They have their opinions thought out, but also they have no qualms about expressing them. But you have got another wonderful show called “shadow priest”. Which really has to go on, if any of your listeners… you know, you can go and get a preview of these programs without actually subscribing, by looking at the little button on the preview or premium channel previews on the site. I can’t recall what it is called but it is very obvious, just right on the front page. Just click on that and you will get a run down of all the different shows. But it is a sort of place that Catholics need to be now. I don’t think anybody can look around the catholic world today, at least in the west. In Europe, Australia and America. And say that there has not been a near melt down. And that melt down is largely because of people’s inability, they were not told anything, they were not instructed in the faith that well.

And then all of a sudden the tidal charges, the bursting out of control. You know, all the craziness of the 60’s and 70’s and that sparked of all of the divorce and abortion and just all everything. Sort of just, you had the perfect storm of catholic who did not know the faith getting smacked down by the tsunami of evil, by contradicting everything the church taught. And there is some awful lot of catholic, tens of billions of them that have been smacked away in this. And you know, so we are thinking you know, this is a probably good way to reach some of them. Hopefully we can reach all of them, like, you know, but I doubt we will reach everybody but we are out there and trying to reach as many as we can.

Chris Cash: Every single one matters though.

Michael Voris: Yes they do, they absolutely do. It is very heartening, very heartening to me when we did a show. I did a vortex in one of my rant, after the election and said that what we needed is a catholic revolution. That is what we need; we need an internal catholic revolution. I don’t mean a violent, burning building down. We need a revolution in mind and heart. A total recommitment to saying this is important to us or it is not. And if it is, it has to be the most important thing, so what do we have to do? Depends on the, who the people are, what are you doing at the Sunday afternoon? Are you running around with your children, you know soccer games and hockey games, this and that and everything else? So God gets just these 20 minutes a week sort of thing. And you are late for mass and you leave early to mass or miss it. That is not the way to be a catholic that is not the way to be a catholic; it’s not the way to be anything. If people treated their spouses the way they treated their God, there will be no body who will be married.

And this is one of the things that we sort of have to help people feel again, you know this is God, you know, even our children don’t belong to us; they are gifts to us from God. And we have a responsibility to get them back to him and that is the very first thing when we look at and see them in the morning , the last thing as we think as we are talking in the night that, our priorities are off. And we have got to fix that.

Chris Cash: Right we are going to take a short break, to hear from our sponsors. When we come back we will be speaking more with Michael Voris a bout our realcatholictv.com. This is the Catholics spot light.

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Chris Cash: And we are back on the catholic spotlight with Michael Voris from realcatholic tv.com. And I just wanted to throw in my 2 little sense worth about the subscription service. There is a lot of good stuff out there that you can find for free. When it comes to the catholic world, none of us in any part of the catholic market place, whether we be a book store or a TV station or anything. None of us are in this to make a little money, so when someone asks for a fee for use; you got to believe that it is mainly to keep something on air. Certainly, if you appreciate having good catholic TV and good programming available, not just to yourself but everybody please do consider supporting catholictv.com, realcatholictv.com with a membership so that they can grow and they can put on some more shows and nobody out there is trying to get rich off this $10 a month kind of subscription at least not in our world.

Michael Voris: You got that right…

Chris Cash: Yes, so, can you tell me Michael about the, you do have quite a bit of subscriptions, so at the moment you are doing ok. I guess the big question I have got for you is how the younger audiences are responding to this. because obviously EWTN had an skew towards an older audience, my grandmother, she is in her late 80’s and I guess EWTN is the only channel she watches and you know God bless EWTN for being there for her and for making sure that she is able to see her daily mass, because that really does make her day. But it is not; at least the majority of the programming on EWTN is not really interesting to a younger audience. I have watched quite a few things on the EWTN and gotten quite a bit out of certain things but like the kids programming, I have tried to get some of my kids to watch the kids programming. And they will watch for 2 minutes and its just can’t compete with the other things out there. So can you tell me a little bit about the, the younger demographics are responding?

Michael Voris: Yes. I think the best way to sort of do this is, you know we are talking about younger catholic, I have worked in TV for 20 years and every single time we do anything in TV or anything in video production. The very first question I always ask is “who is the audience”,” who is the audience”,” who is the audience”. Always. I want to understand the audience as best as possible because whatever it is we are trying to convey to them, needs to be understood. It needs to be easily understood by that audience. So, one of the things that we have found, you know, we are new at this; we have been doing it for a little while. And of the things that have jumped out at us, is the younger audience I am talking about twenty something crowd down into high school. I really don’t like being talked down to, you know, I hate it when using the word young, because, you know, they don’t like that, they don’t like being thought of as the youth.

Their brain conjures up images of you know 10 and 12 year olds. They don’t consider themselves youths, they consider themselves young adults. And even if they are not happy about their old age at least that is how they picture themselves. And that is played to, and marketed to and everything else the entire childhoods and then their adolescent years and even in their young adult years they have been treated as they are adults. The type of material thrown at them and the type of marketing campaigns, and the kind of marketing campaign leveraged at them and all of this stuff is what in their heads, so kids today are a lot more, I don’t know if they are mature but they certainly think they are more mature. Because of the way people in companies and corporate America has treated them. And maybe in fact, they maybe on certain levels, more mature….

Chris Cash: From a consumer stand point.

Michael Voris: Yes, absolutely, sure they are. They can’t help it, but, if you are looking at that audience, what do this audience want? This is a pretty savvy audience. That is the bottom line that I am trying to get here. It is a savvy audience and if you start to sit there and chide them or pull the wool over their eyes, talk around an issue, talk sideways.

Something, they know it. They immediately know it. Adults, older adults are always used to people couching things; you know sort of worried about 4 or 5 different agendas. And in every single sentence they say. Young folks do not like that, they don’t respect that, they don’t respond to it and they are many adults who don’t respond to it either. Particularly the young adults just can’t stand that. They feel like …… and I think to a certain degree they are correct. They feel like they are being talked down to. Which is almost being patronised? So one of the things that we have done is all of our shows are very direct. There is no messing around there is no water down. Don’t say it like it is a treatment, or worry about not being, worry about being offensive. We do not deal in that arena there will be a lot of people who do not like this sport, that is too bad. You know, there is different ways to approach different people and I think a lot of the young people would have responded favorably to this idea in their minds that they come here, they get just as it is.

They send us emails, they jump on our forums, they talk to us directly and say “Hey, what about this, what about that” and we give direct answer back. And I think a lot of them, you know…the same thing, my mom, when she was alive, god rest her should, loved EWTN, your grandma loved EWTN, they have been through a life time and most likely, have gotten some basic grounding in the faith. So they can sit there and got a move on that level. Young folks, today, don’t have anything; they don’t have any grounding in any faith. An occasional one here or there. You know, somebody who has grown up in a home school environment, but theses are all in the minority. They are in the deep minority, the vast majority of catholic kids today. I mean we do read stories everyday on our cast, I know. I write these stories everyday, I know. They are in the vortex. Young adults simply do not know much about the faith. They do not even know the most basic of things about the faith. So when you say to them “Hey, you need to start thinking about what is going to happen when you die”. Nobody, nobody you know, talks to somebody when they are 20 like that.

They might say don’t get drunk and die in a car accident. Because that would be awful and you would not get to enjoy the rest of your life. And nobody sits and talks to them about “what’s going to happen to you when you die? Because you are” and you know, just like I am going to do. You are nothing special but you are god’s Baptists, the result of our fallen human nature. By the way when we talk about fallen human nature. You ever wonder why you are jealous; you ever wonder why you are this. You ever wonder why sometimes just feel greed or you know every people reject you, these things are inert in your nature.
We are going to talk about nature. Let’s talk about what is human nature for a while. You just engage young adults like that and they immediately respond. Many of them not all of them, many of them. Immediately respond, but they are not. there is no way they are going to be interested in going to mass and what is the big joke in about the , there was a minister who was trying to figure out how to get his bats out of his bell tower, there was a catholic church and a protestant church right across the street from each other. And this one minister was standing out in the street and this minister came out into the street and they were talking to each other, and he said “I can’t get these bats out of my bell tower for anything” I have set up poison and traps, and you know fire traps. Nothing gets rid of them, and then he said I noticed I don’t see any bats for a very long time. He said to the priest and the priest says “No no. but you are right, we baptized them, gave them personal communion and gave confirm them and then we have never seen them since” and that is pretty true of how things goes.

The young people today don’t fee like they have any connection with the church because the church has not given them a reason like they need to have a connection to it. And you know, they walk, they have taken a walk but their spirituality is still there. Their need to want to be connected to something on a spiritual level is absolutely still there. That is just inert in all of us you know. Young, old, middle aged whatever. But it is not being met today by the church because the church has not explained, look what looks like a piece of bread is Jesus Christ. You want your sins forgiven? This is what the sacrilege confirmation is all about. Your life changed. You want to give yourself purpose for the air you breathe. This is what you need to do, this is where you need to be, this is why Christ established this church.

Who is Christ? What do you mean when you say Christ? What do you mean when you say Jesus? Who is that? Who is – all of these things and there are so little, where people get today in church. People just come out and have this sort of point blank, unvarnished discussions with them. Why is it wrong for you to be sleeping with your girlfriend? Why is it wrong if you are going t o be shacked up with this guy? They don’t even think it is wrong! They are not interested in even hiding it. It does not even occur to them that there is something to hide. That is how far down the road…. and these are catholic kids

Chris Cash: And many times from catholic kids who do go to mass on a regular basis.

Michael Voris: Oh yes, yes, they don’t think there is anything wrong with it. They don’t think there is a thing wrong with any of this stuff. Nothing at all. Oh yes, that might not be the best thing to do, because you might catch a disease or something like that. But as long as you are careful it is fine. The cardinal society did a, I don’t know if they conducted or paid for it to be conducted, but there is a very extensive poll done on catholic college kids. 60% of the kids who answered on the poll on catholic college campuses, on major catholic college campuses, said they know nothing about their faith. They have learned nothing about their faith at the catholic school. I am pulling this out of my head, I think it was a very big majority 70%, 74% said they disagreed with most of the church’s teaching about moral teachings. Most of the moral teachings. 60% were in favor of abortion. 57% said or 58% I think said they were in favor of guy marriage. I mean it is just staggering and these are kids of catholic, catholic kids from catholic colleges.

If this is what you’re so called intellectual cream of catholic crowd, up and coming catholic crowd face, what do you think is going on with the rest of the church? You need to get to these kids and talk to them. 60% of them, catholic kids think it is fine to just rip a kid out of the womb. You know, what is going on? So this is our approach that you know what, real catholic needs to be real catholic. We are talking reality over the faith, so we thought lets put a station together online and call it realcatholictv.com

Chris Cash: so do you have any final word before you finish up here?

Michael Voris: We just hope people can come to the site, take a little tour around, realcatholictv.com and you know see if they will tell friends about it. Jump on line and you know say this is great and pass the word around and say it is where the church is going to be. It is where the church is got to be, not the only place but it is the new frontier and the church absolutely has to be there. If you think about the number one thing on the internet is pornography, Christ needs to be on the internet, Christ needs to be the number one thing out there, and you know, catholic we have a responsibility, we have a command.

And we have marching orders from Christ himself to take all the corners of the earth so this is the latest corner of the earth and we cannot be here, we got to be here regardless of the cost.

Chris Cash: Well , thank you very much Michael it has been a real pleasure to have you on and every one out there please do got check out realcatholictv.com, we will have a link in the show notes and God bless.

Michael Voris: God bless, and thanks so much for having me on.

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Transcript of Interview with Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.