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The family guy
Editor's Note:Sen. John McCain's surprisingly strong challenge to GOP front-runner George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination hit a speed bump this week due to accusations that McCain had used his influence on behalf of a contributor, Paxson Communications. Salon Media takes a look at the man behind Paxson Communications.
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Jan. 8, 2000 |
But the McCain story, which focuses on two letters the senator wrote last month, before the FCC ultimately approved the sale, has brought unwanted publicity to Paxson Communications and its founder. For the most part, Paxson flies under the radar of major media scrutiny, despite owning the largest group of TV stations in the nation. Last September, NBC announced a distribution deal with Paxson in which NBC traded $415 million convertible stock for a 32 percent stake in Paxson Communications. For NBC it meant a second distribution outlet for its programming, while for Paxson's family-friendly Pax TV network, it provided a welcome infusion of cash. And Lowell "Bud" Paxson is a man who knows the value of a dollar. As a radio station manager in Florida in the '70s, he suddenly found himself with 112 toasters from an advertiser who couldn't afford to settle an account. Bud hit on the bright idea of selling the toasters on the air -- and they were gone in 15 minutes. From such humble beginnings came the Home Shopping Network (toasters, yes, but beautiful glass figurines, too!), which Paxson and partner Roy Speer sold to TCI's Liberty Media in 1993. In between selling HSN and beginning Pax TV in 1998, Paxson experienced a religious conversion. As related in his autobiography, "Threading the Needle," he was staying at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, mourning the dissolution of his marriage, when he found a Gideon's Bible in his bedside drawer. (The book's title comes from Luke: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.") The irony of accepting Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior in a hotel with a Roman theme seems to have been lost on Paxson, but he is not a man given to irony. The 6-foot-6, 64 year-old purveyor of infomercials began Pax TV to combat what he called the "moral manure" found on television and pledged that Pax (the Roman word for peace) would not air gratuitous sex, violence or bad language. And though a man who likes to praise the lord (he has built a church in Florida to preach in), Paxson knows that religious programming means ratings death. "I want it to be parables and storytelling," he told AP of his network's fare, "which is what Jesus did." Unlike most merchandisers of entertainment, Paxson started with containers before worrying about the content. He had bought 78 TV stations across the country before coming up with programming for them, and launched in August 1998 with reruns of such tried-and-true network fare as "Touched By an Angel" and "I'll Fly Away." Pax's own attempts at programming ("Flipper: The New Adventures," "Little Men") have been slightly less memorable, which may account for the network's dismal audience share.
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