Greensburg diocese launches quarterly TV show and magazine

The Greensburg Catholic Diocese takes to the airwaves this weekend for the launch of a new multimedia outreach program, complete with a quarterly 30-minute Sunday morning television show.

The program airs at 11:30 a.m. on WTAE-TV, Channel 4, the local station that once employed Jennifer Miele — the diocese’s chief communications officer — as a news reporter.

The new show won’t feature a Mass. Instead, Miele reprises her on-air presence in The Accent On-Air. During the first show, titled “Faith and Food,” she leads viewers through a line-up that includes a guide to local parishes’ Lenten fish frys, an interview with Bishop Edward Malesic, a look at a church coffee klatch and a member’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Like Catholic parishes and mainline protestant churches across the northeast and Midwest, those in the Greensburg diocese have struggled with a declining and aging membership in recent decades. And they are still dealing with the fallout from last summer’s Pennsylvania statewide grand jury on clergy sexual abuse.

The new outreach effort that includes the TV show, a digital news site and a quarterly magazine, reflects the church’s new communications and evangelization strategy, Miele said.

The first edition of the magazine matches up content-wise with the line-up in Sunday’s TV show, along with featuring a selection of good-luck ads from local politicians seeking re-election.

“It has meal ideas and stories that all center around the recipe for a good life that God gave us,” Miele said. “We should not forget that something as simple as a fish fry may be what brings someone back to their church, even if they’ve been away for a very long time.”

She said all work on the new projects was done in-house.

The $5,000 bill for television air time was covered by ad revenue, Miele said.