Ethics Panel Investigating Crouch, TBN : Religious Broadcast Group Is Looking at Station Acquisitions

Paul F. Crouch, founder and president of Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network, is under investigation by the ethics committee of the National Religious Broadcasters, committee chairman Richard Bott Sr. has confirmed.

The investigation into some of Crouch’s business practices could lead to his expulsion from the voluntary organization.

“There have been allegations, which we are looking into,” said Bott, president of Bott Broadcasting in Independence, Mo. Officials at the NRB, which ended its annual convention in Washington on Wednesday, confirmed that an inquiry was under way.

Bott, who was interviewed before the NRB convention, declined to provide details. But according to a 17-page complaint submitted to the ethics committee--copies of which have been given to The Times--the allegations focus on Crouch’s acquisition and building of new television stations over the past 16 years.

Spectacular Growth

TBN has undergone spectacular growth over the past 16 years. The network and subsidiary organizations now own or control more television stations than any other single owner in the country. The network includes 17 full-power UHF stations and more than 75 low-power stations around the country, in addition to at least 20 other stations around the world.

Included in the NRB’s investigative activities was a secret, 14-hour meeting of the ethics committee in Los Angeles in late September during the group’s western regional convention, according to a person who attended the session and asked not to be identified.

The complaint against Crouch was filed by the Rev. Keith A. Houser of Dallas. In a telephone interview from Dallas, Houser said he has been battling Crouch in the courts and before the Federal Communications Commission for the past 6 years for control of WTBY-TV, Channel 54, in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

In his complaint, Houser repeats charges that he made in a lawsuit and before the FCC, alleging that Crouch unethically took over the station, which Houser said he founded. Houser alleged that Crouch joined with other station board members and “cut deals with these parties without my prior knowledge and virtually started a hostile takeover of the television station.”

The complaint also charges that the takeover was part of “the modus operandi of Paul Crouch in the taking of several other television stations,” or building or buying new stations that undermined the audience of existing Christian stations.

Houser’s lawsuit over the control of Channel 54 is scheduled to go to trial soon, he said. There is no action pending before the FCC, which has granted a license for Channel 54 to Trinity without reservation, Houser added.

Denies Ethics Breach

The Rev. Phillip Crouch, vice president of TBN and brother of Paul Crouch, denied Wednesday that the organization had operated in any unethical fashion.

“We have certainly never wanted to hurt another organization,” he said in a telephone interview. “If we are hurting one (Christian station), we are hurting ourselves. But we don’t feel we are doing this.”

Crouch said that his brother, who is in Phoenix on broadcasting business, is “a little upset at the NRB for not coming to him first. This is something that upsets him. We’re kind of worrying about their ethics.”

Whatever decision the NRB’s ethics committee reaches in this matter may be moot, according to Paul Crouch’s longtime Washington attorney, Colby M. May, who handles the network’s dealings with the FCC. That, May said in a telephone interview earlier this week, is because Crouch may leave the NRB within the next 2 weeks.

May said he has advised Crouch to withdraw from the NRB rather than comply with new requirements that all boards of directors be controlled by individuals “other than those joined by a family relationship, staff or employees” by Jan. 1, 1990.

Mandatory to Belonging

By Feb. 15, all members of the NRB must submit applications to join the new Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission of the NRB. The watchdog group, which is not the same committee that is investigating Crouch, was established in the wake of the televangelism scandals of the past 2 years, and membership in the body is mandatory to remaining in the NRB.

Among other charges made by Houser to the NRB is that Phillip Little, a private detective employed by TBN, was used to “intimidate” network critics and former employees. In a telephone interview earlier this week, Little, who is chairman of West Coast Detectives Inc. of North Hollywood, acknowledged that he visited various people around the country on the network’s behalf, but he said he never intimidated anyone.

Crouch was one of several televangelists who testified before the House subcommittee on oversight in Washington in October, 1987, as a result of the scandal involving Jim and Tammy Bakker’s alleged personal and financial improprieties. In that testimony, Crouch cited his involvement with the NRB and its new Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission as one of several examples of Trinity’s financial accountability.

Phillip Crouch said that his brother had not yet made a decision about remaining in the NRB. But Paul Crouch “does want to talk with people at the NRB,” his brother said.

Latino Relationship

All of TBN’s 10 boards are headed by Paul Crouch and dominated by family members and employees.

Houser’s complaint to the NRB also touched on the broader issue of Crouch’s relationship with Latino broadcasters.

Houser cited the case of Blackie Gonzales, who started a Christian television station in Albuquerque, N.M. “Crouch went on Blackie Gonzales’ Christian station, built up a following of that station’s donors and then bought a station in the same market and took the donors away from the existing ministry,” the complaint alleges.

In a telephone interview from Albuquerque, Gonzales confirmed the details of Houser’s allegation but declined further comment, saying that he “didn’t want to cause any strife.”

The last Spanish-language broadcaster left the Trinity network in the mid-1980s, according to Santa Ana evangelist Terry Moran, who had a Spanish-language program on TBN until 1979 and who now buys time on KMEX, Channel 34, in Los Angeles.

Canceled Spanish

“I felt sad when Paul canceled all the Spanish on TBN,” Moran said. “If Paul wanted to help the Hispanics in this country, they’re here by the thousands.”

Phillip Crouch said that Spanish-language broadcasts are no longer produced and broadcast from KTBN-TV, Channel 40, in Tustin--the network’s flagship station--because all of channel’s programming automatically is sent via satellite to all stations in the network. Many of those stations, he said, serve areas where few Latinos live.

Such programming is being produced, he said, at Trinity’s Phoenix studio for use at stations in the Southwest and Florida.

Staff writer Michael D. Shear contributed to this article from Washington.