Saturday Night, 1957
On a Saturday night in the summer of 1957, ABC broadcast Billy Graham's New York Crusade live on national television. 96 million Americans watched — roughly 60% of the entire country's population. It was one of the largest audiences in television history at that point, and it wasn't a sporting event or a political speech. It was one man, standing in Madison Square Garden, talking about God.
The broadcast wasn't slick. No special effects, no celebrity guests to warm up the crowd. Just Graham, a microphone, and the crowd at MSG. ABC executives had been sceptical about giving prime Saturday night airtime to a preacher, but the public response was overwhelming.
65,000 Decisions
What happened next was something television had never seen. Across the country, 65,000 people contacted the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to say they had made a decision of faith while watching the broadcast. Not at a church. Not at a rally. Sitting in their living rooms, watching a black-and-white television.
The medium itself became the meeting place. People who would never have walked into Madison Square Garden were reached in their own homes, on their own terms. No social pressure. No altar call they had to physically walk to. Just the message, the screen, and whatever was happening inside them.
Antarctica, 2005
Nearly 50 years later, Graham's crusade footage was still reaching people in places no evangelist could physically go. In 2005, a group of researchers stationed in Antarctica watched archive footage of a Graham broadcast. Four of them — scientists at the bottom of the world, surrounded by ice — reported that the message had changed something fundamental in them.
The signal kept travelling. The broadcast kept working. The medium carried what it was given.
The Broadcast Changed Television Too
The 1957 ABC broadcasts didn't just change viewers — they changed what networks believed television could do. Religious programming went from niche Sunday-morning slots to prime-time consideration. The idea that a spiritual message could command a mainstream audience was proven, and the ripple effects shaped decades of broadcasting.
What This Means for You
A screen can carry more than entertainment. In 1957, people found faith through a television. In 2005, they found it through archive footage in Antarctica. The technology is never the barrier — it's what travels through it. Whatever screen you're reading this on right now has exactly the same potential.