Pastor Jakes Welcomes The TV Challenge

Dallas pastor T.D. Jakes says he’s unfazed by the unorthodox way in which his self-named talk show is being distributed.

On the contrary, he welcomes the challenge. “I’m learning everyday very fast and I like to be involved. This is a learning curve for me,” Jakes told TVNewsCheck in an interview Wednesday in a suite at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach during NATPE. “I understand the uniqueness of this model and I like the uniqueness of this model because it’s new,” Jakes said.

The “new model” he’s talking about is this: T.D. Jakes is being distributed by a station group, Tegna, without the aid of a national syndication company. After testing the show last summer on a handful of its stations, Tegna cleared it this past fall on 29 of its stations and then announced it was a “go” — with just 22% U.S. coverage — for a premiere this September.

Tegna is producing the show along with 44 Blue Productions. Jakes’ own company, T.D. Jakes Enterprises, is also a partner. Syndication sales veteran Scott Carlin is on board as a consultant helping to sell the show. At NATPE on Wednesday, Carlin said he has taken a lot meetings and is making good headway.

“Everything I ever did started at ground level zero,” Jakes said. “It is the fight that attracts me. If everything were nice and neat and all put together, I’m not sure I would be as energetic.”

“It’s an opportunity to disrupt a model that hasn’t really worked that well,” added Stephanie Noonan Drachkovitch of 44 Blue, executive producer of T.D. Jakes, who joined the minister for the interview. “If it had,” she said, “then everything [that has ever been] launched would be a hit.”

Jakes, 58, is a charismatic Dallas-based minister of a nondenominational Christian megachurch with a congregation he said numbers about 30,000. He has been married for 33 years and has five children.

He said he sees his new show as an extension of what he has done as a pastor for 40 years — namely, counseling people in times of crisis and grief. “I have resolved conflicts from people in the White House to people in the crack house,” Jakes said.

“I don’t see it as a deviation from what I do all the time,” he said of the show. “I’m just now allowing the cameras to watch.…  I’ve been a pastor for 40 years and have interacted for all that time with human conflict and stories of interest. It’s what I do every day. For me, this is the continuation of that emphasis. It’s not a shift, it is just a broader platform through which I will be able to communicate.”

Guests on T.D. Jakes will be ordinary people with problems ranging from full-blown crises to everyday concerns such as finances or time-management, Jakes said.

“It is really providing for people a strategy whereby they can be empowered and uplift themselves step by step in a practical and pragmatic way,” he said. “We don’t see a lot of that on television right now.”

And when he feels unqualified on a subject, he’ll have experts on the show who are. “I can’t tell you how to fix your carburetor, but I can get you somebody who can,” Jakes said confidently.

With his background as a religious leader, should viewers expect T.D. Jakes to be in any way a religious show? “It is not a faith-based show,” he said, “but we are not afraid to talk about faith.… I think that the show will be no more religious than the society that it speaks to.

“It is one subject that we’re going to talk about,” he said. “We’re going to talk about sexuality. We’re going to talk about fear. We’re going to talk about psychology. We’re going to talk about people.”

In a question that was perhaps worded awkwardly, TVNewsCheck asked him: What presence, if any, will Christ have on the show?

To which Jakes answered good-naturedly: “If he appears, the ratings will go up, so we will pray for that!”

Read all of TVNewsCheck‘s NATPE 2016 coverage here.