DVR Alert! There’s a 2-Hour “20/20” Special on Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker TOMORROW NIGHT!

The story of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker – who hosted the popular religious talk show PTL Club and founded of the Christian-themed park Heritage USA before having a spectacular fall from grace in the 1980s – is fodder for a two-hour special on this week’s 20/20.

For those of you who don’t remember the story:

Jim and Tammy Faye preached on national television and made a fortune by continuously requesting donations from viewers for PTL-related projects. Using fundraised money, they opened Heritage USA, which drew nearly 6 million visitors per year at the height of its popularity. However in 1987, their luxurious lifestyle came to a CRASHING halt with The Charlotte Observer’s investigations into PTL: first with the news that the ministry had negotiated a payment of more than a quarter million dollars to cover up a sexual encounter Jim Bakker had with church secretary Jessica Hahn, and then with its continuing exposés into PTL’s finances, including the revelation that Jim and his associates PROMOTED lifetime partnerships to stay on the Heritage USAproperty that far exceeded capacity. Jim quickly fell out of public favor when Hahn claimed that Jim allegedly raped her, despite his maintaining that the encounter was consensual.

World of Wonder famously made a sweetly humanizing doc about Tammy called The Eyes of Tammy Faye as well as a follow up series Death Defying, which followed her terminal cancer journey.

Both Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato are interviewed in the 20/20 episode along with…

Grammy Award winner BeBe Winans, who describes how he and his sister, CeCe, got their big break on the “PTL Club”; Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth, who is creating a musical on Tammy Faye; singer Pat Boone, who discusses his long association with the Bakkers; actor Jim J. Bullock who co-hosted a talk show with Tammy Faye; Jerry Miller, former assistant U.S. attorney who helped send Jim to prison; Don Hardister, former chief of security for PTL and the Bakker family and Ted Koppel, former ABC News “Nightline” anchor who extensively reported on the Bakkers during the time the SCANDAL hit. The documentary also includes footage of Jim and Tammy Faye’s “PTL Club” TV shows, some of which has not been seen on television in over three decades.

20/20 is anchored by David Muir and Amy Robach. David Sloan is senior executive producer.

(via Broadway World, photo: MediaPunch)

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By James St. James

5 years ago

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