Faith For Today with Pastor & Mrs William A. Fagal

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As I mentioned the Indiana University Archives has acquired my film collection, and among the shows are a few dozen original 16mm film prints that are being restored.

: I just noticed the show has a website I have to explore and contact them. It would be great if these are rare one of a kind film prints. Even nicer would be to tell the story of the shows creation during The Golden Age of Lost Television in the 1950's.

Notes from website:

William A. Fagal, along with Virginia Fagal, founded the Faith For Today television ministry. The first episode was launched on WJZ-TV (now WABC-TV) in New York, NY at 9:30 p.m., Sunday, May 21, 1950.

The broadcast was owned and fully sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist church. ABC’s station managers offered their services and airtime on the condition that Faith For Today would produce programming that exploited television’s demand for movement and emotion and would appeal to a broad audience.

By December, 1950 it became the first authentically national religious telecast in North America, having spread to an 11-station transcontinental hookup in 6 short months. The Fagals brought church members from their Washington Avenue Church in Brooklyn, N.Y. to perform the stories that Pastor Fagal wrote. The very first religious television dramas were created.