By With $200 and 12 nuns with no television experience, Mother Angelica turned a monastery garage into a television studio launching what would become the largest Catholic media network.
Forty-five years ago today, Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation launched the first broadcast of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) from a converted garage in Alabama. What began as a humble television venture would grow into the world’s largest Catholic media network.
With $200 and 12 nuns with no television experience, Mother Angelica turned the monastery garage into a television studio. EWTN received its Federal Communications Commission license on Jan. 27, 1981, making it the first Catholic satellite television station in the United States.
Just a few months later, on Aug. 15, 1981, EWTN began broadcasting four hours a day to 60,000 homes.
The anniversary, Aug. 15, also marks the feast of the Assumption, a solemnity commemorating the end of the Virgin Mary’s earthly life and her assumption, body and soul, into heaven.
As EWTN commemorates 45 years of spreading the Eternal Word, here’s a look back at the work and progress of the organization that all started with the mission of one cloistered nun.
EWTN starts growing rapidly
In 1983, the network launched its flagship talk show, “Mother Angelica Live.” Despite innumerable challenges and millions in debt, the network grew, supported only by viewer contributions.
Around the same time, cable channels began to pick up EWTN. Within a short period, the network went from tens of thousands of homes to hundreds of thousands.
It quickly expanded from the original four hours of broadcasting to all day content. In 1987, programming expanded to a 24-hour daily schedule, reaching 10 million American subscribers.
EWTN branched out of television by launching a worldwide shortwave radio service in 1992. Its worldwide AM/FM radio services began just four years later.
Soon the network started establishing a global presence. In 1995, EWTN launched its first international television service for Latin America. That same year, the network provided live coverage of Pope Saint John Paul II’s visit to the U.S., in both English and Spanish, on television and radio.
By 1996 EWTN programming was also reaching Europe and the Pacific Rim, including Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, and the Philippines. A big year for the network, 1996 also marked when EWTN.com went live.
In 1998, EWTN launched satellite television service to Africa. By 2009, the network was reaching the extraordinary number of 150 million television homes.
The vast expansion marked an important transition from an American Catholic television network to an international Catholic media network, which would continue to grow in the years to come.
Expansion to print and digital media
Mother Angelicaʼs early series of small pamphlets and books eventually grew into electronic and print news services. In 2011, the network acquired The National Catholic Register, one of the countryʼs oldest Catholic newspapers.
The acquisition was part of a broader effort to expand EWTNʼs presence in Catholic journalism.
EWTN continued this effort when it launched “EWTN News Nightly” in 2013, a daily television news program from Washington, D.C. This was significant because it moved EWTN further into daily news production rather than religious programming and coverage of Church events.
In 2014, EWTN acquired Catholic News Agency as well as its Spanish-language sister agency, ACI Prensa. Today, EWTN News includes agencies covering global Catholic news in Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, French, English, and Arabic.
In 2026, EWTN News announced a rebrand and is currently in the process of bringing most of its news entities — print, digital, and broadcast — under the global brand of EWTN News.
EWTN moves forward
Forty-five years later, EWTN is now reaching more than 435 million television households across more than 160 countries and territories. The recently established EWTN Studios continues the EWTN legacy of developing the most impactful content in the Catholic space, and EWTN Digital is building the platforms to distribute EWTN Studios content to new generations.
EWTN Radio reaches a global audience through more than 500 domestic and international AM and FM radio affiliates, satellite radio, and digital streaming platforms.
EWTN Publishing publishes books in both print and electronic form to a worldwide audience and has now released around 100 books by renowned Catholic authors who have profoundly influenced the faithful.
Through live coverage, documentaries, and more, EWTN has covered four pontificates and numerous historic Church events and has shared the lives and faith of Catholics across the globe. It also reaches millions of online users through its social media including its presence on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
EWTN’s story began with a television network and continues to be guided by Mother Angelicaʼs vision of using modern technology to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and truths of the Catholic faith with millions around the world.
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“45 years after its first broadcast, EWTN has become the largest Catholic media network in the world”
Unfortunately, it’s gone woke.
While I don’t watch the TV side, I listen to the radio side almost every day and follow the National Catholic Register web site daily. I must disagree that EWTN has “gone woke.” That assertion will require some hard evidence. Is it to the left of LifeSiteNews or the SSPX? Of course– but that hardly qualifies it as “woke.”
Andrew: just go back over the titles of articles that EWTN News supplies to this site. They’re not flagrantly woke but there’s a flabbiness to their orientation. They clearly now show a biased spin in favor of CCUSA, CRS, CCHD, USCCB, etc.
EWTN News major problem is the credulous nature of its writers. A while back, there was an article about some aspect of illegal invasion. The “authority” cited was some activist group. The reporter should have reviewed the group’s 990. It was in my opinion, a “pufferfish”. Ditto for the article on the attention seeking nun Norma Pimental who claims priests call her for assistance when illegals are apprehended-as if she was an attorney. Either way, it’s bad. Either she’s a liar or they are weak men.
There’s more to reporting than being an attentive stenographer. I have for a long time, been a contributor to ETWN. What I’ve noticed is all of the mail they send-and it IS OVERWHELMING has Mother Angelica’s image, but the print side reads more and more like the other NCR. I’m redirecting a substantial part of my donations.
I believe you can ask them to turn off the regular mail or get more emails or texts?
They might consider selling some of their music (compiled). Like Mother’s funeral liturgy music and singing I can still remember.
Dear Deacon. “Flagrantly WOKE? They’re not flagrantly WOKE, but there’s a flabbiness to their orientation.”
Supporters see it as a positive push for Black equality. Critics use it as an insult for progressive policies they view as extreme or divisive.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion might save the day.
Thank you
Are you a caricature? There’s nothing in the Deacon’s remarks about race.
“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion might save the day.”
Even a person with your obvious observational and interpretive deficits can see that an acronym for that malice is D I E. Because DEI is so toxic, it’s being rebranded as Diversity, Equity, BELONGING and Inclusion. There’s no acronym that exposes the evil in “DEBI”. Of course, maybe they’ll add yet another letter, niceness and then we can ridiculous the whole apparatus as “BIDEN”.
But then again, an aging Boomer with employment in the rear view mirror such as you is never going to sit across the table from HR Karen Pantsuit who solemnly tells you that no, you can never be relieved of the elaborate, false charges of an employee who retaliated for being counseled about waving a banana like a gun, complete with sound effects of automatic gunfire, by filing a handwritten complaint that was done with such rage, the paper was embossed.
Nor will you hear “you’re not part of a protected class”.
What does skin colour have to do with EWTN?
Their music and singing program is beautiful.
It is beautiful, knowall. I wish we could borrow some of that for our little parish. Our young choir director went into the seminary and it’s been hit or miss since then.
Congratulations. Spreading the Good News is a meaningful mission in world building. Wishing the EWTN world builders – strength and stamina for now and in the years to come. God bless.
“World builders”?
Without discounting the importance of working to build a better world, even the optimistic Jacques Maritain had this to say: “There has been, moreover, a good deal of confusion on this score. Neither Christianity nor the Church [nor EWTN] has a mission to make men happy, their business is to tell them the truth [!]—not to bring about justice and freedom in the political society, but to give mankind salvation and eternal life…” (“The Range of Reason,” 1952).
Peter: Thank you. Spoken with clarity and common sense.
I don’t really understand the accusation that EWTN has gone woke.
But I don’t particularly care for this crowing about EWTN’s expansion.
To me, what’s important is that it deals in truth. If it does, I’m in. If it doesn’t, size means less than nothing.
“Don’t end it,” does not work in the private or public sector.
I had to stop watching when Arroyo drank the Kool Aid in 2016. Insufferable.