Diane Winston

A quick lesson on how to be a good Mormon.

Don't drink, don't swear, treat your body like a temple.

We are making sourdough bread.

We're going to do a tutorial video of step-by-step how to make your first sourdough loaf.

My name is Diane Winston.

I'm a professor of journalism, communication, and religion at the University of Southern California.

Streaming has really opened up the market for shows about religion, spirituality, faith, morality.

And that's because you can have niche audiences watch a program that's different when you had analog television and you wanted to get the lowest common denominator so you get more people.

But that's not a problem anymore.

In those old days, in analog days, religion was often deemed as too controversial or too marginal.

And so you didn't want to offend anyone, and you picked shows with the largest possible audience, like Touched by an Angel or Highway to Heaven.

But now, given the fact that religion is everywhere, whether we're looking at politics, social life, culture life, it's not so surprising that we see more programs with religious characters and religious themes.

We're seeing both shows that are more explicitly religious and shows that have religious themes.

The most exciting example is probably The Chosen.

The Chosen is a show about Jesus and it's sort of how he lived his life.

It's not supernatural.

It's not flashy.

It's just showing life in Palestine circa 0 to 33 Common Era.

And Jesus' people is just like his posse.

So it's very down to earth.