TV mogul Mark Burnett’s new religious epic The Bible set cable TV records in America when it debuted on Sunday night. The first episode of the 10-hour History Channel mini-series, which races through the stories from The Bible, was the highest-rated cable show of the year, bringing in 13.1 million viewers.
The figures fell 800,000 short of the network’s record-setting 2012 drama Hatfields & McCoys, which starred Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton as the patriarchs of feuding post American Civil War families.
Thrilled Burnett, who predicted The Bible will eventually be seen by more than a billion people around the world, says, “We could not be more thrilled with this out-of-the-gate success. The world is watching right now and we are incredibly humbled by the reaction to the series. More people are discussing God’s chosen people–Moses and Abraham–in one day than ever before.”
What does this mean for Christian television programming? Sound off.
