A New Preacher for PTL

By Richard N. Ostling

It stands variously for Praise The Lord or People That Love, but PTL, the former evangelistic empire of Jim Bakker, has recently spelled nothing but trouble. In its heyday, PTL operated the biggest all-day, all-God TV network and reached 14 million cable households, in addition to controlling a theme park and retirement village. But its founder's fall and imprisonment shattered the empire and left it bankrupt. Last week it got a new -- and quite unexpected -- owner.

The principal bidder for the PTL cable network looked to be evangelist Oral Roberts, whose career has had more ups and downs than the water slide at the now defunct theme park. It has been mostly downs since he launched his desperate give-millions-lest-I-die fund-raising drive in 1987. In the past year the Tulsa televangelist has laid off 10% of his staff and folded his cherished City of Faith hospital and medical school. In search of a more promising venture, Roberts decided to take a bold gamble and offer $6.5 million to obtain PTL's cable-TV operation, now known as the Inspirational Network.

But at the last minute Roberts was shut out by a federal bankruptcy judge in Columbia, S.C. The judge instead approved a surprise bid of $7 million from another faith-healing charismatic, San Diego-based Morris Cerullo. The purchase brings new U.S. visibility to Cerullo, 58, who is far better known in the Third World. A flamboyant and apocalyptic preacher who converted from Judaism as a teenager, Cerullo runs revival meetings, Bible training courses and a daily TV show. He keeps secret how much money is raised for these ventures but boasts of being debt-free.

Cerullo won out because the new bankruptcy trustee, Dennis Shedd, preferred to unload all the PTL remains as a unit. Roberts wanted only the TV network, while Cerullo was willing to offer a total of $52 million for all of Bakker's former empire. There were five other eleventh-hour bidders, including a secular TV-ad broker who offered $8.35 million for the cable operation. But Cerullo is the rightful heir, his lawyer pleaded, because "the men and women who created that partnership were Christians." A court hearing on the non-TV transaction will be held next month.

What happened to televangelist Pat Robertson, owner of the Christian Broadcasting Network and seemingly a natural bidder to resurrect PTL-TV? Robertson made two separate bids, one for the network, the other for the whole package, but both were rejected as inadequate by the bankruptcy trustee. Rival televangelist Jerry Falwell, who owns a small cable outfit, got burned while running PTL and stayed out of the fray.

Cerullo is entering a dicey and competitive business. Although cable is ( ideal for specialized TV programming, experts figure that only two or three of the numerous religious networks can survive the next few years. Eternal Word (independent Roman Catholic, 14 million households) and ACTS (Southern Baptist-owned, 9.5 million) are pinning their salvation on locally based denominational loyalty. An interfaith and ecumenical entry known as VISN (7.4 million) just got Tele-Communications, Inc. and other cable owners to pledge as much as $12 million and give it two years to succeed. But VISN's programming is nonconfrontational, and hot gospel shows are all the rage.

Thus Cerullo's big threat would seem to be Paul Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network of Tustin, Calif. (13.3 million households), which transmits evangelical and charismatic fare. Cerullo claims not to fear Crouch ("There's room for five or ten stations in that market") and says PTL cable is but the first step toward a "family-oriented global satellite network." As for the real estate, he plans to have a "good, clean, wholesome" theme park reopened by next spring.

With reporting by Tom Curry/Columbia