After only one season, the Potters House of Dallas pastor’s run on Tegna stations as nationally syndicated host of T.D. Jakes is over.
“We are really proud of T.D. Jakes,” said Bob Sullivan, senior VP of programming for Tegna, which owns 46 stations in 38 markets, covering about 30% of U.S. TV households.
The cancellation, first reported by Broadcasting & Cable, which may come as a shock to ardent Jakes supporters who love the program, is explained by Sullivan.
According him, “The economics of daytime, not Jakes or the quality of the show itself, is what has taken us out of play for the second season, which is frustrating.”
The talker, which started out as a four-market test run in the summer of 2015 before expanding to additional markets, didn’t gain the traction it needed to compete in the overcrowded daytime television talk show space.
But all is not lost.
Though the 59-year-old MegaFest founder is getting the boot from Tegna stations, he still has a comfortable home on one cable station: The Oprah Winfrey Network. OWN acquired his hour-long show last September, embracing its mixture of faith-based inspiration, human interest stories, celebrity interviews and Jakes’ unique brand of self-help tips.
The former queen of all media, Oprah Winfrey, who helped Jakes with his foray into daytime talk with, offered him some wisdom gained from experience. The best-selling author and movie producer revealed in a September 2016 interview with AOL’s Build series that she told him “It is important that you have talent” and “it’s very important that you have the kind of talent that necessitates a daytime audience.”
