The PTL Club

History

Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy had been in the ministry with the Assemblies of God since the early 1960s prior to joining Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, then based in Portsmouth, Virginia in 1965. The Bakkers launched a children's show called Come On Over (later to be retitled Jim and Tammy), where the couple entertained viewers with songs, stories, and puppets. In 1966 Jim Bakker became the host of The 700 Club, a then-new religious talk program which evolved from a telethon. The 700 Club would become the flagship program of Christian Broadcasting Network, which expanded from its original Hampton Roads station to include outlets in Atlanta and Dallas–Fort Worth by 1973.

Beginning in 1972, The 700 Club was launched in a dozen test markets including then-independent station WRET-TV in Charlotte. When station owner Ted Turner dropped the show from his station in 1974, Turner approached Bakker about buying two hours a day on his Charlotte station, which Bakker accepted. He opted to call the show The PTL Club, Trinity Broadcasting (TBN NETWORK) used the title Praise The Lord for their flagship show until January 2017, the show is now called 'Praise'. It appears that PTL, PTL CLUB, and Praise The Lord has again returned to Jim Bakker as TBN no longer uses any of those names or acronyms as of 2017. The 700 Club moved to then-ABC affiliate WCCB in Charlotte. The program began as a local TV broadcast in a small studio at WRET in November 1974. The show expanded to a few other stations early the next year, such as WGGS in Greenville, SC, WHMB in Indianapolis, WHCT in Hartford, Connecticut and KHOF in Los Angeles, among a few others. The show launched nationally in the fall of 1975, with two editions offered: one was the full two-hour edition, which tended to air on Christian stations and smaller independent stations, and the other was a one-hour edition which tended to air on stronger independent stations, as well as network affiliates.

By 1976, the Bakkers moved their studio to a former Charlotte, North Carolina furniture store. The show continued to be hosted by Jim Bakker and co-hosted by his wife, Tammy Faye Bakker. Bakker and his staff built what became known as the PTL Television Network (later named The Inspirational Network), a worldwide Christian satellite cable television network. In a Tonight Show-type format, the program featured many well-known ministers and Christian recording artists. In the beginning, "Uncle Henry" Harrison (who had worked with Bakker at CBN) was the co-host/sidekick (much like Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson), and when Tammy Faye took over as co-host, Harrison became just the announcer.

The program was later broadcast from Bakker's Heritage Village ministry headquarters and complex on Park Road in Charlotte, and then moved to studios constructed at the ministry's new 2500-acre mixed use family theme park and resort in Fort Mill, South Carolina known as Heritage USA. Bakker's conspicuous consumption and prosperity gospel preaching led critics to claim that PTL stood for "Pass The Loot."

As time went on and as more stations had additional programming commitments by 1981, many opted to only run an hour of the PTL Club. In the fall of 1982, the show was cut to an hour, at which length it remained until its cancellation.

Scandal and subsequent demise

Due to his involvement in highly publicized financial and sexual scandals, Bakker resigned on March 19, 1987. He turned the cable network, the Heritage USA complex and all ministry assets over to fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell. Falwell became CEO of parent company, Heritage Village Church & Missionary Fellowship, Inc. and assumed control of the network and of its flagship program. Falwell's involvement was deemed newsworthy, as the PTL ministries were a part of the Assemblies of God denomination and Falwell was a Baptist. Ministry supporters questioned Falwell's intentions and speculatively attributed his interest solely to maintaining control of the lucrative cable-television empire owned by PTL to use to broadcast his own ministry programming from his Lynchburg, Virginia headquarters.

One commentator noted that "Bakker arranged for Falwell to take over PTL in March in an effort to avoid what he called a 'hostile takeover' of the television ministry by people threatening to expose a sexual encounter he admitted to having had seven years earlier with church secretary Jessica Hahn." According to Hahn, on the afternoon of December 6, 1980, when she was a 21-year-old church secretary, Bakker and another preacher, John Wesley Fletcher drugged her and raped her for "about 15 minutes". Hahn stated she overheard Bakker say afterward to another PTL staffer, "Did you get her too?"

A federal grand jury ultimately indicted Bakker for directing millions of dollars of church funds to personal use. Much of the nation watched the court case to see the outcome of the $165 million in donations.

The PTL Club continued as a television program for considerable time after this, first with Falwell as its host and PTL personality Doug Oldham as co-host. Falwell later brought in Christian singer Gary McSpadden as the show's co-host, along with PTL musical talent Ron Aldridge. The show was renamed PTL Today, then — in an effort to distance the show from the PTL name — Heritage Today. Aldridge continued as co-host alongside another PTL singer, Brenda Davis, after Falwell suddenly resigned from the now-bankrupt PTL ministry. McSpadden and Oldham subsequently left the show out of support for Falwell's decision to resign his position with the ministry.

With Falwell's resignation, Sam Johnson, a member of the PTL ministry team, assumed leadership and incorporated a new entity known as Heritage Ministries to run the television program and associated ministry functions. As Heritage USA and the PTL assets were now tied up in bankruptcy reorganization, the new ministry and the television program had to move from their longtime Heritage USA broadcast studios to newly purchased property on Nations Ford Road in Charlotte that was named Heritage Place.

The program remained on the air as late as September 1988, when Johnson faced problems with the IRS.

In 1989, evangelist Morris Cerullo purchased the network out of bankruptcy. As of 2012 it operates as INSP from broadcast facilities in Charlotte, with headquarters in nearby Indian Land, South Carolina.

On August 23, 1991, after the second and final day of his re-sentencing hearing, the court reduced Bakker's original 45-year sentence to 18 years, five of which he actually served before being released.

In February 2009, Atlanta, Georgia area investment-banker Ben Dyer announced his intention to auction off over 15,000 hours of videotaped episodes of The PTL Club on March 27, 2009. A friend of Jim Bakker's purchased the programs. The master library of PTL programming has been returned to Jim Bakker, and the old tapes are being digitally remastered and restored. Restored programs are being run on the new PTL Television Network on Roku and online at the PTL Television Network's website.