The footage of the pope, alone in St. Peter's Square, praying for the end of the pandemic, reached record audiences on TV and the internet at the end of March.
JAY FADDEN
General Manager, Catholic TV
“I will say that when the Holy Father did the Urbi Mass it was an unbelievable hit.”
The closing of churches has led millions of people to look for religious content on Catholic channels from all over the world.
JAY FADDEN
General Manager, Catholic TV
“I think people are more interested in Catholic, religious contents, during these difficult times because it brings our own mortality into focus and people begin to focus on God in their lives. We begin to investigate our relationship with God in context to the challenges who surround us.”
Some channels, like Televid Colombia, also saw audiences flooding their social media platforms.
JUAN CARLOS GREIFFENSTEIN
Director General, Tele VID (Colombia)
“On YouTube we grew saw a 30 percent increase in our audience. We reached 800,000 followers on TeleVid. On Facebook, we saw a 35-percent increase, reaching 1.8 million followers.”
Other Catholic TVs, like Net TV from New York, have been forced to change their programming to adapt to audience interests during the pandemic.
ALEXANDRA PIÑA,
“What we need to do is to serve our people. So, let's start creating a multilingual celebration of Masses. Even though the churches are closed, we can air the Masses in an empty church and that is what we did. And we show an increased number of people. I mean, our ratings were up in such a way that we knew that what we were doing was actually effective, working. People were looking for this.”
This New York channel broadcasts Masses in Korean, Chinese, Spanish, English, Polish and Igbo. They have been so successful, they have decided to continue the live-streamed Masses.
AO
