By President & CEO Bill Abbott
From time to time, I think it is important to remind you exactly what Great American Pure Flix stands for, and why the choices we make about entertainment matter.
There are a few entertainment platforms today attempting to serve audiences looking for alternatives to mainstream Hollywood, and I am genuinely pleased that more people recognize the enormous demand for entertainment built around faith, family and values.
But that does not mean we all make the same choices.
A new movie called Bad Counselors is currently being offered on another platforms that claims to be a faith-and-values streaming platform. The film ultimately carries some positive themes of repentance, forgiveness and second chances. But it gets there through a story centered on two hard-partying fraternity brothers who wake up hungover after drunkenly vandalizing their college, then pose as Christians to become counselors at a children’s Christian camp. The movie includes repeated alcohol use and references, jokes about Christian culture, flirtation and other material that earned it a PG-13 rating. (PG-13!)
I am not writing this to criticize the filmmakers or to tell anyone what they should or should not watch, but I am writing because this is exactly where Great American Pure Flix is different. When we say "Entertainment Without Compromise", it is not merely a tagline. It is a promise.
We believe you should be able to watch Great American Pure Flix without wondering how far a movie is going to go, what your children are going to hear, or whether the values that brought you to us in the first place will suddenly be treated as the joke.
That does not mean our stories cannot have conflict, flawed people, difficult relationships, or characters who make mistakes. Great storytelling sometimes requires all of those things, although we only go there after rigorous debate. And, how we tell those stories matters. We want to entertain you without asking you to compromise on the reasons you came to us.
There are going to be different approaches to faith and family entertainment in the marketplace. Whether that is a positive and treated thoughtfully is debatable, and I think you probably know where I stand on that issue. But it is important for you to know how different we are at Great American Media and how seriously we take our commitment to you. It is your support is what makes our existence possible, and each of you are critical to our mission by helping ensure there remains a strong, independent home for traditional values.
Viewers looking for faith and family based content are not just used to determine a group to market to at Great American Media. They represent the values we are committed to serving, and we will never yield, we will never give up, and we will never give in to those who push us to do otherwise.
Thank you for trusting us.
Bill
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