• Broadcasting & Cable, Tuesday, February 12, 2008 11:15 AM

For years, non-cable religious television has been relegated to early Sunday morning as paid programming, heavy on the sermons. Now, a firm called Faith & Values Media is trying to break new ground with new "family-friendly" content based on various spiritual tenets that it is producing for networks and stations, along with the Web. F&V is owned by the National Interfaith Cable Coalition, which started two decades back as cable network Vision Interfaith Satellite Network and eventually became the Hallmark Channel.

But it has now morphed into a syndicator and distributor. Among recent fare: "The Unusual Miss Nightingale: Her Untold Story," about the English aristocrat turned nurse and a documentary that claims to explain the Quran to non-Muslims set to run this year on the National Geographic Channel. But its biggest venture, says F&V president and CEO Ed Murray, could well be the ad-supported Faith Streams Network, a group of Web sites that will include social networking, premium video-on-demand content, and streaming videos of shows like Hallmark's "New Morning" and F&V movies.

F&V's long-term production deal with Hallmark ended early last month and the company gave up an option to force Hallmark parent Crown Media Holdings to buy its stock, although F&V retains about 5% ownership in the network and has a two-hour Sunday block of programming.

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