The PTL Club

The PTL Club (PTL stands for "Praise The Lord" or "People That Love"), later called The Jim and Tammy Show, and in its last days PTL Today and Heritage Today, was a Christian television program first hosted by evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, which ran from 1974 to 1989. The PTL Club, which adopted a talk-show format, was the flagship television program of the Bakkers' PTL Satellite Network.

History

Jim Bakker and his wife Tammy had been in the ministry with the Assemblies of God since the early 1960s and went on board at Pat Robertson's then television station WYAH 27 in the Virginia Beach area. He helped host his then-new show the 700 Club and beginning in 1965 he and his wife launched a children's show called Come On Over. In the early 1970s, The Christian Broadcasting Network owned three stations in Atlanta, Virginia Beach, and Dallas/Ft. Worth. The Virginia Beach station evolved from a few-hour-a-day Christian themed station in 1970 to a conventional 20-hour-a-day commercial independent station by the fall of 1973. His Dallas station merged with a commercial station making a full-time commercial independent there. Beginning in 1972, the 700 Club was launched in a dozen test markets including then-independent station 36 WRET owned by Ted Turner in Charlotte, NC at the time.