Trinity Broadcasting Network History
The Trinity Broadcasting Network was founded by Paul Crouch, Jim Baker, Jan Crouch and Tammy Faye Bakker in 1973. This was called Trinity Broadcasting Systems in the initial days. The Bakers left the organization and started their own ministry.
The channel began broadcast and national distribution through the cable system in 1978. At this stage it was a member of the National Religious Broadcasters Association and remained so till 1990. In the beginning, the Crouches had to rent out time on a local television channel to broadcast their content. This was the time when they did not have direct access to broadcasting via cable television.
After the local television channel that theory aired their content on was sold off to another company, the Crouches decided to rent two hours a day for their content on KLXA-TV in Fontana, California in 1974. However, this channel was too put up for sale, but this time around the Crouches thought that that they would buy it and put a bid of a million dollars. The initial sum of $100,000 was collected with great difficulty for the down payment. This station became KTBN-TV in 1977.
In the beginning the station was run for 6 hours in a day and slowly this expanded to 12 hours per day. By 1978, the channel was selling time to other Christian organizations to complement the local programming to achieve a 24 hour schedule. The organization was not financially sound to start with and it almost went bankrupt after a few days of operation. But over the years, TBN moved from the UHF band to satellite distribution and purchased independent channels to get cable carriage.
Today the network owns 35 full power television stations that serve large metropolitan areas. Across the world, Trinity Broadcasting Network sends its signal to over 70 satellites and 18,000 TV and cable affiliates.
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