Touched by an Angel Touches Lives The popular television program reaches viewers with a message of love. by Jessie Schut     It's Sunday evening and in millions of home across North America, whole families are sitting down together around the TV.     They're there to watch Touched By an Angel, a television program that has a highly unusual premise for entertainment: there is a living God who loves His people and wants to be a part of their lives.     Can such a message be coming out of Hollwood? Yes, absolutely!     Touched by an Angel, the popular one-hour drama on CBS, features three angels who carry out God's instructions as they interact with people who are troubled. First aired in 1994, the show has fought an uphill battle against poor ratings and bad reviews to emerge in the top 10 shows in the spring of this year.     Skeptical viewers may assume that a program about angels will be cloyingly sweet, but Touched by an Angel is not just a feel-good show. Recent episodes have dealt with issues that are very relevant in the 90's: homelessness, infertility, and reconciliation with estranged family members.     "I think we need to meet those issues," says Martha Williamson, the show's producer and a committed Christian. "The solution is God and ... we have angels that point the way [to God]. They're not just fairies who...give you whatever you want."     Why is this show so very popular? Williamson believes it's because people are looking for something that meets their inner needs. "I think that we are just feeding an audience that has been starved for a long time," she said in a recent interview with Unita Belk.     Della Reese, who portrays the senior angel Tess on the show, and is a pastor real life, told an interviewer with Entertainment Weekly, "People are hungry for spirituallity. They've been told toothpaste will make them happy." In an uncertain and fast-changing world, people more then ever need to hear a message of hope.     Touched By an Angel does that sincerely and effectively. Thousands of letters to the show each week tesify to the effect it's had on viewers. One letter, written from a prision cell reads, "Each Saturday evening there comes a certain "hush" in this room. Mostly, inmates are society's rejects. Many go years and never hear an "I love you." But each week, I've noticed your scripts always manage that God loves each of us and that we are important to Him." Another viewer, grieving her father's recent death, wrote,"Your show has been a vehicle for God to reach out, put his hand on my shoulder, and remind me He is here for us."     The show however, has not been without it's ups and downs. In its first season, TBAA (as it's fondly called by its devotees) was moved all over the place in the TV lineup, making it difficult to find a regular audience. It was very nearly removed from the 1995 schedule, until a committed group of actors and supporters took out a full page ad in the entertainment magazine Variety to rally support for the show. "If author Anne Rice can take an ad for vampires, we can take an ad out for angels," they wrote, urging viewers to rally behind the show. More than 30,000 letters and phone calls convinced CBS to keep it at its regular Saturday night time slot.     In 1996, the show established an audience for itself when it took over the popular slot vacated by Murder She Wrote Sunday evenings following 60 Minutes. It's popularity has since spawned a cross-over show called Promised Land, which Williamson is also producing     Even TV Guide is showing interest in the new focus on spiritual values. It devoted most of the articles in a recent American edition of its publication to the phenomenon, noting that in the past, "God on prime-time television was like God in American culture: submerging only as a guest star whose appearance is rarely announced."     However, with Touched By An Angel, Promised Land, and other such shows raising the standard, hopefully God will be taking up a lot more space on prime-time TV, and not just Sunday evenings.     Martha Williamson TV Producer goes by the Book     The CBS show Touched by an Angel really shouldn't have happened. After all, a show about angels who do God 's bidding is unlikely be a commercial success.     But miracles do happen: Touched by an Angel has become a huge success, scoring as high as #2 in the Neilson television ratings. An estimated 24 million people watch the show every Sunday evening.     The ratings miracle has inspired producer Martha Williamson, 42, to assert publicly, on more than one occasion, that the show's real executive producer is God Himself. She tells the story of how the show came to be in her new book Touched by an Angel.     Williamson began her show-biz career fresh out of college as an assistant to a comedy writer and producer for the Carol Burnett Show. Over the years she was involved in many other jobs, learning the ropes in a competitive business. There wasn't a lot of time for God in her life as she climbed her way up the ladder. She says, "I kept saying [to God], your time will come; someday I'll get to You.'' Then, in her mid-twenties, she realized she wasn't a happy person. She realized that even though she was trying to keep God outside the circle of her life, He really was the circle that held her life together. She committed her life to Jesus Christ.     Now the touchstone for Williamson's work is honesty. "I have worked very hard to make truth more and more the deciding factor in my actions," she says.     As a committed Christian with fourteen years of show business experience under her belt, Williamson was approached by CBS television in the spring of 1994 and asked to do a show about angels. When she viewed the pilot, Williamson turned it down immediately . She didn't like the way angels were portrayed as rebellious, argumentative beings who are really humans who've come back to earth.     But the idea of an angel show wouldn't go away. It burdened her, and months later, after a great deal of prayer, she turned down an excellent promotion with a rival network in order to pursue the "Angels" show. What she placed before the CBS brass in a meeting with them was a proposal for a show based on Scriptural truth.     "We cannot do a show about angels if we don't respect God," she told them. "God has rules, and they do not get broken without consequences. I want to go to the Scriptures to make sure what the rules about angels are and still come up with something an audience can enjoy."     While the powers at the top gave her a green light to produce six episodes, they weren't hopeful about the show 's prospects . One executive told her that he wouldn't blame her when the show flopped. That made Williamson more determined than ever to do it right and do it well.     She had only four weeks rewrite the show, hire a staff, and film the first episode. All she had to work with were the two angels, Roma Downey and Della Reese, but that was a great bonus.     "This show is a God-thing ," Della Reese is fond of repeating to reporters and interviewers. When the show was still in an uncertain state, Reese prayed about it. "I sensed God saying: Do this for me, ''she says .''All those television executives were deliberating about whether to invest in it. I didn't worry because I had already heard it from the 'Chairman of the Board', if you know what I mean I was sure the show would go on."     Williamson's determination to stand up for God and stick to the truth is already having an impact on the world of television. Her actions demonstrate that one Christian taking a risk and making a stand for God can make a difference. Now the networks are waking up to the need for programming that touches on viewers' spiritual needs. At least four new shows that appeal to spiritual instincts are in the making for next television season.     In the introduction to her book about the show, Williamson writes: "The inscription over the Gates of Hell in Dante's Divine Comedy reads: Abandon hope all ye that enter here. A lot of people think that might as well be the inscription above the gateway to Hollywood. Don't believe it!" Williamson didn't, and now all over North America, people are being Touched by an Angel. 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