A Dallas private equity firm co-founded by Robert A. Schuller, the former televangelist from the Hour of Power, has acquired two media companies in Atlanta that nearly quadruple its reach to 50 million U.S. households.

“It’s a pretty big leap,” said ComStar co-founder and chief executive Chris Wyatt, who is Schuller’s son-in-law. “No one knows who we are in Dallas, and we run two major television networks.”

Wyatt hopes to change that. He projects that ComStar’s $5 million in revenue will at least double next year.

Wyatt and Schuller, who is chairman of ComStar, started the company late last year to buy distressed faith-based media companies. Its first fund has a target of $10 million, but the next fund will shoot for $50 million, Wyatt said.
In May, ComStar made its first acquisition, AmericanLife Television Network, which reaches 13 million households, moving it from Washington, D.C.

ComStar is moving FamilyNet to Dallas, transferring a handful of employees, Wyatt said. Officials with Atlanta-based In Touch Ministries, owner of the two FamilyNet companies, did not return phone calls.

“What we’re doing is acquiring these networks that are losing money and turning them around,” said Wyatt, who founded social networking sites GodTube.com and Communities.com. “We’re going to combine them next year and rebrand and relaunch everything, and then rebrand our Web strategy. We’ll use the networks to drive traffic online and vice versa.”
Wyatt said he doesn’t know what the new name will be yet.

Last month, Schuller kicked off a pilot for an AmericanLife TV program called Everyday Life, which also will run on FamilyNet, Wyatt said. It was Schuller’s first TV appearance since leaving the megachurch founded by his father, Robert H. Schuller, in Orange County, Calif., in a family feud and stepping down from the Crystal Cathedral’s Hour of Power TV program last year.

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