Broadcast and cable pioneer Lowell “Bud” Paxson passed away last week. Among many other accomplishments, the devoutly Christian Paxson was the founder of the PAX television network, a broadcast channel devoted entirely to showing clean, family-friendly original programming.
When one of his radio advertising clients paid his bill with 118 electric can openers, Paxson announced on the air that he would sell the openers for $10 each, if the customers would come down to the radio station. All the openers sold in three hours. This event inspired Paxson to create the Home Shopping Network, which soon was doing $1 billion in sales. Paxson sold HSN in 1991, using the profits to buy television stations all over the country.
A deeply committed and outspoken evangelical Christian, Paxson was dismayed by the increasingly graphic and immoral content on broadcast and cable TV. Using his fortune and ownership of TV stations as a base, Paxson formed the broadcast network PAX TV in 1998 – a network dedicated to creating and airing original, clean, family-friendly programming like It’s a Miracle, Hope Island, Doc (starring Billy Ray Cyrus), and Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye.
