TBN, which celebrated its 40 t h anniversary this year, is a 24-hour family of networks with something for nearly every evangelical Christian demographic.
In 2011 he donated more than 150 low-power TV stations to Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, which helps minorities, women and other underrepresented communities own and operate TV and radio stations.īut Crouch’s main mission was to build an alternative to secular media, a dream he achieved with single-minded devotion and creativity. “When you give to God,” Crouch said in a typical appeal, “you’re simply loaning to the Lord and he gives it right on back.”Ĭrouch channeled much of the revenue into charity, funding soup kitchens, homeless shelters and an international humanitarian organization, Smile of a Child, founded by his wife, Jan. His twice-yearly Praise-a-Thons on TBN generated as much as $90 million a year in donations, mostly in small amounts from lower-income Americans. The son of a poor missionary, Crouch was known for preaching a gospel of prosperity. “He has created an enormous platform for many ministries to do what he says is very important to him - that is, to spread the Gospel not only in this country but around the world,” said Steve Strang, founder and chief executive of Charisma Media, a leading publisher of books and magazines for charismatic and Pentecostal Christians.
TBN was not the first Christian network - televangelist Pat Robertson had launched the Christian Broadcast Network a decade earlier - but TBN surpassed its rivals in scope and ambition, bringing the word of God to a global audience of millions. His family did not immediately disclose where he died or the cause of death. In early November the network announced that he had improved enough to return to California. He was 79.Ĭrouch, who had heart problems and other ailments, was hospitalized in October when he became ill during a visit to a TBN station in Colleyville, Texas. The controversial pioneer of televangelism, whose broadcast empire was called “one of evangelicalism’s most successful and far-reaching media enterprises” by the Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism, died Saturday, said his grandson, Brandon Crouch.