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Televised Mass celebrates four years with Skyline Productions
By Rebecca Bostic, rbostic@catholicsun.org
December 4, 2008
For the past four years, Joe Reynolds and his team at Skyline Productions have made the Sunday Mass accessible to homebound Catholics throughout Arizona.
Reynolds’ crew televises the liturgy for the Diocese of Phoenix. This fall, Skyline Productions produced its 200th Mass.
The Mass is broadcast live from Ss. Simon and Jude Cathedral at 9 a.m. every Sunday and can be found on KUTP 45 and channel 9 on Cox Communications. Its intended audience consists of sick and homebound Catholics who are unable to attend Mass.
“One of the key things that helps in providing a televised Mass is if you can find a production company that cares about it as much as you do, and we have that,” said Jim Dwyer, public information officer for the Diocese of Phoenix, who oversees the televised Mass for the diocese.
“Joe Reynolds does a great job. He has a great staff,” he added.
Using his own resources, Reynolds bought a broadcast booth on wheels last February, which has upped the quality and convenience of capturing the weekly cathedral Mass.
“The trailer was something I had mentioned a while back,” Reynolds said. “I decided in December 2007 to take a leap of faith and purchase it on my own as it was simply needed for the growth of the televised Mass and its ministry.”
The trailer is essentially a control room that Skyline can haul to the cathedral from its Mesa studios. Prior to that, Reynolds and his team built a control room in the chapel of the cathedral every week.
Beyond saving time and money, the trailer allows Reynolds’ work to be less obtrusive during the Mass.
“It enables us to go to other churches very easily if we want, it reduces the cost of set up and everything else,” Dwyer said. “So at their cost of buying the trailer, they’ve actually helped to decrease what it costs us to broadcast the Mass.”
Fr. Rob Clements, rector of the cathedral and weekly celebrant for the televised Mass, has become well known to many Arizonans who depend on this ministry.
“It’s a valuable outreach to shut-ins,” Fr. Clements said. This group — which includes the sick, elderly, prisoners, health care professionals and travelers — is well served by the work Skyline Productions does.
“There’s no one more knowledgeable about presenting the Church and the Catholic faith in a creative and contemporary format than Joe Reynolds and Skyline Productions,” Fr. Clements said. “We consistently hear from folks commenting on the prayerfulness of the camera work that makes viewers feel more a part of the assembly gathered here at the cathedral.”
The Diocese of Phoenix is one of the few dioceses in the country that has a Mass televised live, a decision Dwyer and Reynolds made a reality a few years ago.
The televised Mass is also one of the few venues for live television in Arizona, according to Tray Goodman, who has worked with Reynolds on producing it for the last four years.
“For most stations, news is the only thing that’s live. This is going statewide, so it’s a pretty big deal,” Goodman said.
Reynolds is deeply committed to quality Catholic programming.
“I am always looking and researching ways to enhance the televised Mass for our viewers at home, as well as to create new Catholic programming,” he said.
Beyond increasing the quality of the Mass, the trailer has also improved the aesthetic presence of the production company.
Parishioner William Schindlbeck hardly notices the television cameras and equipment now and enjoys the presence of the ministry.
“I record the Mass myself and a lot of times I’ll go home and watch it. Not the whole Mass, but the readings and the homily,” Schindlbeck said. “It’s making God known to the world — a bigger world than just the inside of the church.”
Fr. Clements is well aware of the audience tuning in to the televised Mass and has “even received notes from people just channel-surfing who saw the Mass and became interested in Catholicism,” he said. “So while it’s a service mainly to shut-ins, it’s an important vehicle of evangelization as well.”
The Diocese of Phoenix and Skyline Productions would like to see the televised Mass continue to improve, with dreams of increasing the timeslot of the Mass to an hour and a half, so special Masses can be aired live and in their entirety.
Also, Skyline Productions is looking for a grant or donation of $5,000 to permanently install new audio equipment, which would remove the presence of nearly all wiring.
The biggest challenge the televised Mass continually faces is financial expenses in the growing media market of Phoenix.
Andrew Junker/CATHOLIC SUN
Joe Reynolds stands by the trailer he purchased to help televise the weekly Mass from Ss. Simon and Jude Cathedral.
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