In Rod Meredith's recent member letter, after he had his expected sex obsessed gay/transgender fit, he made the following comments about LCG's "Internet television" audience.
In addition to working to grow our “Internet Television” audience, we also strive to increase the reach of our various other Internet and social media platforms. For example, many of you know that people nowadays—especially younger people—go to “YouTube” to watch videos and go to “Facebook” to talk to their friends and even to find the news. According to a May 26, 2016 Pew Research Center study titled, “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016,” an astounding 62 percent of adults “get news on social media.” The same study reports that this is up from 49 percent in 2012. As this report also notes, “Facebook is by far the largest social networking site reaching 67 percent of U.S. adults.” Similarly, many people now watch video every day on YouTube, which has well over one billion users, with a majority of those visitors coming from outside the United States. Because we must reach the whole world with the true Gospel, we continue to work hard to use all of these platforms and technologies. As of this writing, our English-language Facebook page now has more than 217,000 fans, our Spanish Facebook page has more than 46,000 fans and our French Facebook page has over 118,000 fans. And our English-language YouTube channel passed 12,700 subscribers and more than 6,700,000 views. Our Spanish YouTube channel passed 22,000 subscribers and more than 4,700,000 views. And our French YouTube channel has passed more than 2,400 subscribers and more than 540,000 views. Very importantly, through these efforts we are reaching people whom we may not reach otherwise, and many of those people are reading and “sharing” Tomorrow’s World articles, telecasts, webcasts, commentaries and booklets with their online friends. We sincerely thank God for blessing our Internet “reach” in these ways, but we know that we must reach the whole world, and so I do ask you to keep praying that He gives us much greater growth in the months and years to come.
Meredith was been fed some reports that mentioned that young people now get their news and other information from the internet. Meredith sees the internet use of these kids and their parents as his new platform to exploit. For some silly reason Meredith has been fed a huge line that Youtube is the way to go. Can you imagine a teenager sitting down and watching a 1 1/2 hour sermon by Rod Meredith or a Herbert Armstrong return? No one, not even an adult will sit and watch a 1 1/2 hour sermon made by some incredibly boring and biblically challenged preacher. Heck, even LCG members will not sit and watch these videos!
Youtube, while filled with lots of great videos, finds most of its use from cute dog/cat/baby 3minute videos. The public has no interest in LCG videos. Its only audience is its own members and COG members from other groups who continue to church hop for information as their own churches are imploding.
Even UCG, considered by many to be the more benign of the splinter groups, can't accomplish much of an internet reach. 10-20,000 "like's" on a video does NOT translate into a witness for their god or its message they claim to preach. Graceless legalism sucks, and even the non-churched understand that!
Like most things in the Church of God it is already 10 - 15 years behind the times. In trying to imitate everything that HWA did, they focused upon print magazines, in incredibly boring telecasts, Jelly videos, whitewashed propaganda Feast videos, and spent time and millions of dollars building monuments to themselves instead of "witnessing" to the world.
Not a single Church of God out there has taken their message to the entire world. Even Dave Pack with his superfantabulous website has been unable to do so. Thiel has not, even if he claims a couple thousand members in Africa. James Malm circles the drain due to the incredible anger and venom that drips from his graceless legalism. Gerald Flurry is more concerned about HWA idolatry, Irish dance and finding the Ark of the Covenant that he has lost touch with reality, if he even ever had it.
All of the Churches of God now look to the Internet to resurrect their message. The problem is that the internet has DESTROYED the Church of God and relegated to an insignificant corner of the cyberweb. As more and more web sites pop up with horror stories from these splinter groups of Armstrongism, and the numerous films and movies that have come out about abuse, the COG's sink deeper and deeper into irrelevance.
Shrewd entrepreneurs, and others with messages do successfully take to the internet, but that's not going to be any sort of silver bullet for LCR or the other ACOGs. The failing track record of Armstrongism is too prominent on the web, and there's not much they can do to reverse the effects. One might speculate that time could change this, but one would be wrong. Time allows for a greater accumulation of prophecy failure, and the types of science that have been unkind to Armstrongism progress further each day. Today, right now, is as hospitable to the Armstrong message as conditions will get.
ReplyDeleteBB
Here are some examples of the new YouTube videos that LCG is counting on to replace the expensive-to-produce half-hour telecast:
ReplyDeleteIs Pokémon Go the Balm Against Evil?
Transgender Man-Pig Marriages?
Will China Accept the Spratly Islands Ruling?
NHS Debt Load And the Gender Games
LGBT Agenda Marching Forward
At least these only take 5 or 6 minutes to watch, but are they really any better than the longer programs? If this is the future of LCG, I don't think UCG or COGWA have much to worry about as far as competition.
I really don't see why it bothers some so much about RCM when he talks about sex and the evils of it on a regular basis. The fact that he does is simply because the problem is there on a regular basis and continually gets worse and worse, and he is correct in what he says so what's the problem, and why you would call what he says a sex obsessed fit is ridiculous, he is simply telling it as it is. I could call the same thing about this blog, on a regular basis we get to hear an expected RCM obsessed fit, non stop, I "expect" to hear more of the same tomorrow. I'm not sticking up for RCM or defending him, I'm just saying he is right about what he says when it comes to sex and the way it is and has become, it's too bad others wouldn't speak out about it more instead of slamming those who do.
ReplyDeleteFor those who doubt that it is possible to hold people's interest on a religious subject for the half-hour length of a World Tomorrow or Tomorrow's World program, consider these:
ReplyDeleteGod in the Dock
Is Anyone Listening?
This Side of Eden
These half-hour programs remain fairly popular even as re-runs, as they provoke the viewer to think deeply about their topics. The problem is that a half-hour of Rod Meredith prompted absolutely no one ever to do anything other than accept passively and uncritically the speaker's message.
Why does LCG assume the shorter pieces will be more interesting to the kind of audience that wants an LCG program?
ReplyDeleteIf you go to the Tomorrow's World page on YouTube, you will find that they are making "Digital Shorts" which are basically 3-minute "minisodes" of the original longer programs. So, how do the minisode views compare to the long-form views? Let's check a few:
Like Sheep for the Slaughter: 4,880 long-form, 1,229 short.
Ebola can be Prevented: 1,855 long-form, 829 short.
Is Christmas Christian? 1,444 long-form, 1,344 short.
Even the long-form don't get much of an audience, but the short-form seem to do worse, not better. On the rare occasions where they do much better than the above, they seem to do so much better that it is reasonable to wonder whether LCG paid to promote them.
If this is the future of LCG, COGWA and UCG can breathe a big sigh of relief.
HWAs church chose to not magnify the ten commandments. This is a serious sin of omission. Most members to this day don't realise that they were only fed milk and never spiritual meat. There was a explosion of self help books from the 1970s onwards, but the church ignored this and chose rather to continually focus members minds on religious technicalities. Technicalities that have absolutely no relevance to everyday life. David Pack is a master of this. This continues to the present day. Audiences have wandered away to greener pastures on the internet.
ReplyDeleteRod and gang, you missed the boat. While you were wasting your time and our money on television stations, the wise were using the internet.
ReplyDeleteWhile the internet usage took off, you were stuck in the past. I for one rarely ever watch ,videos on u-tube.
How are you going to get new people to find or even watch your videos? I bet you, your lcg members won't watch them. Oh well, you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Your mistake was as a dictator you did NOT listen to good advice, so with all your old yes men adviser's it's late.
Good luck with that one. $$$$$
Cute Cat Videos should be the vehicle that the COGs use. Id watch a two sermon on the net if it was given by a cat, wouldn't you? !
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether religious messages on youtube are as viable as they have historically been on radio, television, and printed media. One normally views youtube topically. In my case, on say a Friday night, I may be mirroring my iphone on my flatscreen TV, watching some Kinks, Cinderella, or BB Chung King musical videos or performances. It has never happened yet that I would accidentally run across a Rod Meredith presentation on masturbation and the coming apocalypse. Now, such accidental encounters could very easily have happened regularly with the old World Tomorrow broadcasts during some late night dial twirling on the radio, or channel surfing on TV. Many old school WCG members first heard HWA or GTA on their car radio on some of the old clear channel AM radio stations. People who view religious messages on the internet would need to already know they are present, and to
ReplyDeletebe looking for them specifically. The ones most likely to see these are current church members and or religious hobbyists, and these are not the types and numbers of people who can make presentations go viral.
If the four digit numbers cited by Anon. 5:55 are typical as to how all of the ACOG messages are being viewed, this is internet poverty! We can easily begin to understand how mention of one of their messages here on the Banned blog would cause a phenomenal bump in number of views. I mean, imagine the inflated numbers this has probably given Bob Thiel alone!
Ron Paul reaches large numbers of people with his secular apocalyptic messages by placing "commercials" on already popular sites. Hopefully, Rod Meredith will never ruin Grateful Dead videos by spnsoring them on Youtube.
BB
These people keep dreaming about a return of the glory days of Worldwide. 'Taint gonna happen. First of all, you have to have a vast pool of not too knowledgeable victims glued to an inexpensive but ubiquitous medium like radio without the competition of the internet, television, smart phones, Twitter, etc. That world no longer exists. Then, you have to have a spellbinding orator who can grab your attention and imagination and overwhelm your naive mind. None of the wannabes come close to old Herb's or Ted's ability to spread it thick and persuasively. Must be frustrating for them, but if you don't have it, you just don't have it. Even they would have a hard time in today's environment. Allen C. Dexter
ReplyDeleteTo me it's HILARIOUS that 10 YEARS after Youtube was founded and sold to Google for 1.65B, Rod Meredith FINALLY gets the "news" that people younger than him aren't watching TV or reading print media anymore. Now LCG will be able to reach the whole world, and this is finally going to change LCG's fortunes.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the theory that Youtube is the way to convince people that the corrupt and evil ministers of LCG are the ONLY access in the WHOLE WORLD to the REAL invisible man in the sky, who, if they perform the right set of ancient rituals, will be appeased and give them goodies after they die. Because that makes soooooo much sense, and there's sooooo much evidence that's true, anyone would be a fool not believe it.
And I'm going to start using Youtube as the means to try to convince people that Santa REALLY DOES live at the North Pole and uses elves to make toys (and lumps of coal) all year long, which he then distributes singlehandedly from one sack carried on a flying sleigh to every single christian household in the entire world over the course of just 24 hours once each year.
Sometimes the problem isn't just that people aren't seeing your advertisements, but that the product you're selling is so impossibly unbelievable and/or undesirable that even if everyone in the entire world was fully aware of you and your product, your only takers would be drawn from the ranks of the clinically insane.
LCG has missed the boat on this one. RCG has been using YouTube for a couple of years now, and even paying for advertising on it. Pack has been bragging about the millions of viewers that are seeing the videos. I surprised all posting here have not already been watching them!
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to be nasty, but that's going to be a problem when you have old men in charge of organizations like that. It's not 1960 anymore and you can't get prospective members with a crappy magazine or a lecturous TV show crammed in at some hour with a limited audience. The playing field has shifted away from that.
ReplyDelete"And I'm going to start using Youtube as the means to try to convince people that Santa REALLY DOES live at the North Pole and uses elves to make toys (and lumps of coal) all year long,..."
ReplyDeleteAnd you know what, if you're successful in your adventure you will probably only get christains to debate you and no atheists.
It's not 1960 anymore and you can't get prospective members with a crappy magazine or a lecturous TV show crammed in at some hour with a limited audience. The playing field has shifted away from that.
ReplyDeleteDon't be so sure. Anyone watching Rod Meredith on YouTube is just a few clicks away from search engine information that will scare away all but the most gullible new prospect. Compare this to someone who sees Meredith on television, and can't push a few buttons to discover Terry Ratzmann, triple-tithes, ministerial bullying, HWA incest, and so much more.
On YouTube, Meredith's message will be drowned out by thousands of other messages and it will be counteracted by the ease of finding dissident (truthful) information about his group. On television, Old Rod can command their full attention and get them to pick up the phone or write their first check before they have done the kind of search most any Internet user would do.
Is Pokémon Go the Balm Against Evil?
ReplyDeleteTransgender Man-Pig Marriages?
Will China Accept the Spratly Islands Ruling?
NHS Debt Load And the Gender Games
LGBT Agenda Marching Forward
Are they serious? Did any of those guys graduate from Spokesman Club? A couple of those efforts wouldn't even have passed a typical Spokesman Club evaluation. I guess when you are a favored HQ minister and your boss is a blind and senile octogenarian you can get away with almost anything.
"And you know what, if you're successful in your adventure you will probably only get christains to debate you and no atheists."
ReplyDeleteA) This was meant facetiously. LCG might as well use Youtube to push belief in Santa as the beliefs they're actually using Youtube to try to push. If the past is any indication of the future, either one will result in roughly an equivalent draw.
B) I'm agnostic/atheist, so why would I want to debate atheists? For that matter, why would I want to debate christians either? In my experience, people deconvert because they realize that religion no longer fulfills a useful purpose in their personal lives, not because somebody talked them out of it.
There is one chance and only one chance: Meredith is going to have to have extremely well produced videos come out for LCG on the topics:
ReplyDeleteAlcoholism and its impact on the Churches of God;
How false prophets are bringing this nation down!
Produce those and there will be plenty of hits!
"LCG Looks To Internet As Its Saviour and Mouthpiece"
ReplyDeleteGreat!
This is the internet. Hopefully the LCG will look here!
(Sorry LCG, we're not looking to save you or be your mouthpiece. However, we ARE willing to tell everyone on the planet what a brain-dead church you are! Thanks to you, there are myriad examples of your church's putrid stench.)
Years ago, I remember someone telling me about YouTube, and he said, "YouTube won't let me sleep!"
ReplyDeleteEarlier today, I read a post here where TradingGuy didn't like the invention of the light bulb, because it's bad for trade and people stay awake at night because of it.
Although I'm curious as to why he'd say the invention of the light bulb is a "trade" issue, I'm curiouser as to how he'll describe 'YouTube' as a trade issue, too!
Oh. My. God.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw someone described a Tomorrow's World webcast titled, "Transgender Man-Pig Marriages?", I KNEW it must be a joke.
But I did my due diligence and took a look, and, SURE ENOUGH, there's actually a Tomorrow's World webcast titled, Transgender Man-Pig Marriages? !
Their Youtube "Seven Signs of the Beast" at 2:55 gave me a boner when it showed the hot chick riding an awesome beast.
ReplyDeleteIts at
this click
August 22, 2016 at 5:32 PM
ReplyDeleteI forgot the ;)
Santa hasn't done as much damage by those that claim to speak on behalf of God.
ReplyDeleteTheir 3D CGI is lame.
ReplyDeleteshe needs to be a brunette
9:33
ReplyDeleteIn california one of the earliest and original lightbulbs is still burning (in a firestation somewhere I could look it up if needed).
Companies soon realised they needed to produce a lightbulb that dies after a while otherwise trade would be zero.
And this goes for the redesigning of cars every two or three years (ask Lee Iacocca) etc etc, your washing machine etc.
We need a more sustainable economy so trade and surplus profit dies.
nck
Anon 10:20..if looking at that turns you on you should be locked up away from the real world and from walking around looking at and lusting after real women all day.
ReplyDeleteI did my due diligence and took a look, and, SURE ENOUGH, there's actually a Tomorrow's World webcast titled, Transgender Man-Pig Marriages?
ReplyDeleteIt's a well-established psychological principle that speakers most fervently attack what they're dealing with themselves. At least that's what the AC faculty brought out in the "Manpower Papers." We certainly see this when Rod Meredith talks so much about government and sex. We know where his mind is at.
What should we assume, then, when we see a video warning against "Transgender Man-Pig Marriages"?
The fact that the cogs are having very little success in any of their methods, is that people are just too busy. Very few can sit still for very long without losing attention. There is also the fact that many would do a Google search and find out that these groups have many negative aspects.
ReplyDeleteWho now a days can afford the cost of 30% of their income going to a church when the economy is in the tank.
All in all, radio may be the only medium that would keep the attention, as those driving are going to get up and leave, other than in their car/truck.
"In california one of the earliest and original lightbulbs is still burning"
ReplyDeleteHere's a link:
http://centennialbulb.org/photos.htm
Ronco
9.33 PM I have made no mention of light bulbs, so please, no using my name in vain. YouTube is a excellent example of the competitive free market of ideas. Trade at its best. Herbies localized monopoly resulted in the usual shafting of his 'customers.'
ReplyDeleteCheers TradingGuy
Almost-Audited Bitter Bob isn't the only COG mouthpiece who is having a hard time avoiding politics. LCG is filled with Trump sympathizers who (unless you're Mike Germano or Jon Meredith) can't actually vote for him. The least they can do, therefore, is to support Trump's agenda, as with simplistic nonsense like the following:
ReplyDeleteNational Borders, a Godly Concept
Yes, even the simplest Bible-reader can read the word "border" again and again and come to the conclusion: God approves of borders. Wow!
How sad it is, then, that these Bible-readers don't read further and do a study on the word stranger. Yes, the nations have borders, but the Bible makes it clear that there will be strangers within Israel's borders, and that God will judge Israel for how they treat those strangers. Consider:
Exodus 12:49. " One law shall be for the native-born and for the stranger who dwells among you.”
This is a radical statement in light of modern nation-states. Even in the USA, it's common to see conservative judges assert that a stranger does not have the same rights as an American citizen; it's generally the liberal left that upholds this principle from Scripture. Why don't we see the religious right-wing promote this clear standard from God's Word?
Then there's Hebrews 13:2. "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels."
How many angels does LCG (or Trump) want to deport across the border?
It would be a fascinating Bible Study to look at how many of Jesus' commands are roughly approximate to the rhetoric of the liberal left, and how many approximate the conservative right... and then to determine whether the ACOG groups promote both the "liberal" and the "conservative" commands equally. LCG and PCG, I suspect, would fall on the "ignore Jesus' liberalism and push His conservatism" side by a wide margin. Yet the LCG/PCG people seem oblivious to just how much they are siding with and even promoting one strain of politics in their nation.
Thank you Ronco,
ReplyDeleteExcellence, perfection and craftsmanship is better than trade.
An excellent trader talking here. (patting myself)
nck
Nck, craftsmanship means trading with your God given gifts and nature. We trade with God, nature, other people. Everything is trade, including your craftsmanship excellence.
ReplyDeleteCheers TradingGuy
1.45PM Nice cherry picking of scriptures. How about Christ's 'It's not right to give the childrens food to dogs.' God gave the land of America and similar to the sons of Abraham, not to the gentile 'dogs.' The 'strangers' are meant to be 'crumbs from the table' ie a small percentage. Which means, closed borders. Yours is the typical President Banana supporter twister of truth.
ReplyDeleteOh boy, there goes the BI nonsense again.
ReplyDeleteThanks TG.
ReplyDeleteI saw DBP post another question on the Jephtah tread.
I understand the recent criticism on your take. But I learn from/through people who are "different".
I am trying to amalgamate your take on things with recent studies on altruism and "share economy". (I'm referring to websites where entire communities can share grass cutters and other tools as an attempt to elliminate wasteful behavior.) I'm in favor of sustainable production of resources without killing trade and commerce. In the end economy is human behavior. And behavior can be steered with philosophy.
nck