After first blaming time constraints as the reason certain references to God were cut from a popular children's television series, NBC on Friday acknowledged that the edits were made because the network did not want to appear to be advocating any religion.
The new statement came in the wake of mounting criticism from advocacy groups that questioned why NBC had asked the creators of "VeggieTales" to take out the references.
"NBC is committed to the positive messages and universal values of 'VeggieTales,' " the statement said. "Our goal is to reach as broad an audience as possible with these positive messages, while being careful not to advocate any one religious point of view."
Terry Pefanis, chief operating officer of Big Idea Inc., said the producers were warned in advance by NBC that a Bible verse at the end of the show would be edited out. The producers then selected shows from their library that were less overt in their Christian message, Pefanis said.
"We knew all the religious content in our shows would be sent through a filter.... So far, we feel like the shows play very strong with those edits," Pefanis said. "If they asked us to edit something that we were uncomfortable with, we would hold our ground and say we're uncomfortable with it."
But "VeggieTales" creator Phil Vischer said he feared that it would be difficult to make the series as secular as the network wanted it to be. Vischer said the editing was more extensive than expected, requiring the show's producers to take out certain episodes' references to God, such as "Remember kids, God made you special and he loves you very much."
"We have some stories that work fine but not 13 shows in a season," he said. "When the first edit notes came back, I thought, 'This is going to be difficult because the stories were going to fall apart.' This has implications for 'VeggieTales' which would have been nice to talk about in the beginning."
Vischer said trying to change the show's Christian message ran counter to the show's expressed mission.
"It's a mistake to pitch 'VeggieTales' as just values because fundamentally it's about God," said Vischer, noting that the show was slated to fit into the network's "literacy and values" time slot. "It's nothing against NBC. It's just that they want to please everyone."
