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As Other TV Ministries Flounder, Crouch’s Network Flourishes : Religion: Trinity Broadcasting’s donations are up, and a radio network has been started.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Unlike other television ministries hurt by fallout from the Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart controversies over the past 2 1/2 years, the Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network has emerged virtually unscathed.

Throughout this period, Trinity’s founder and president, Paul Crouch, quietly has been changing the shape of the family-controlled network and 24-hour-a-day Christian programming service. While Robert H. Schuller, of Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral, and Oral Roberts have announced sharp cutbacks in their organizations during this period, Trinity has continued to grow.

Trinity’s donations are up slightly, a radio network has been started and Crouch recently has sold off two of Trinity’s smaller stations in order to purchase larger ones. Three companies to which Trinity has given extensive financial support actually have added five affiliated stations to the network. These transactions--involving Crouch’s son and several people who receive free air time on Trinity--”raise some interesting questions” regarding Trinity’s expansion, an FCC attorney said.

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But Crouch’s attorney, Colby M. May, said that Trinity’s “loans made to other tax-exempt, nonprofit Christian ministries are negotiated at arm’s length” and are not improper.

Crouch, who is out of the country, has steadfastly refused to criticize Bakker or Swaggart, who buys time on Trinity, along with Schuller and Roberts. On his Oct. 5 broadcast, Crouch simply asked viewers to pray for the Bakkers.

In the course of this year, Crouch wrote in his August newsletter, the tax-exempt network has experienced “the most explosive growth in our 16-year history--165 stations on the air, worldwide.” The network, already the largest owner of television stations in the nation, has expanded at a rate of one new low-power station per week in 1989, Crouch told viewers in a recent broadcast.

Numerous family members are now employed at Trinity, but Crouch’s son, Paul Jr., has not been a full-time employee of Trinity since 1980. However, Paul Jr.’s tax-exempt Sonlight Broadcasting System of Tustin has announced the purchase of three television stations, outlets in Holly Springs, Miss., Mobile, Ala., and Hendersonville, Tenn., for a total of $2 million.

While none of the three stations are now on the air (two are not even built yet), all will be Christian and affiliated with TBN, Paul Jr. said in an interview from his Tustin production company. The purchase was made possible with his own money, Paul Jr. said, as well as with support from his partner, Jay Sekulow, an attorney who appears regularly on TBN. A critical factor in the company’s financial viability, Paul Jr. said, was the advance purchase of air time on the new stations by Trinity.

“That’s what’s financed us to this point,” Paul Jr. said.

May, Crouch’s attorney, said that this arrangement was not unusual, since “throughout the years the major (commercial) networks have made advance time purchases and loaned money to other broadcasters.”

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Crouch announced the sale of two of his full-power commercial television stations this year--both of which he said were not producing enough revenue--enabling him to buy two stations in larger markets and remain within ownership limits of the FCC.

One of the stations, in Albuquerque, N.M., is being sold for $2.5 million to a tax-exempt company called All American TV of the City of Commerce, according to documents filed Sept. 6 with the FCC. That company, which has four other religious stations affiliated with Trinity, was set up with the assistance of loans from Trinity, said All American’s president, Sonny Arguinzoni, a Puerto Rican evangelist who has a weekly program on Trinity for which he does not pay. According to IRS documents, All American had an outstanding loan from Trinity of $5.29 million in 1988, up from $3.75 million in 1987.

Another religious broadcasting company, Tri-State Christian TV Inc. of Marion, Ill., which was set up with the help of loan guarantees from Trinity, announced recently that it has purchased WNYB Channel 49 in Buffalo, N.Y., from the Buffalo Sabres hockey team for $2.5 million. It will also be affiliated with TBN. Trinity has an outstanding loan to Tri-State of $1.45 million, according to federal documents. Arguinzoni and All American Director Nicky Cruz--both former Tri-State board members--began their company by buying four stations from Tri-State, using money borrowed from Trinity, Arguinzoni said.

Alan Glasser, an FCC attorney, said that Trinity’s relationships with these other companies “raise some interesting questions” with regard to its expanding influence but that the loans, in and of themselves, “would not really indicate there is a common thread of ownership and control” that extends beyond the stations Trinity owns.

Trinity is also branching out into radio. With the acquisition of two commercial radio stations in Washington state and a public FM station in Barstow, Calif., the network has begun building a complementary radio network.

“This is our chance,” Crouch wrote in the newsletter, “possibly our last chance to capture another great voice for God--a radio voice! Let’s reach our youth and all America with our programming--in their cars, at home, even on portable Walkman radios with the truth about the Bible, creation and the love of God.”

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Financially, the network appears to be doing well.

In documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Trinity reported a 10% increase in donations from 1987 to 1988, the most recent year for which figures are available. Trinity reported more than $22 million in direct public support, up from 1987 but less than half of Trinity’s announced pledge totals for the network’s twice-yearly “Praise-a-Thons.”

The network’s net worth--book value rather than market value--was listed in federal documents at just over $90 million. A year earlier, that figure was about $75 million. Crouch has said on numerous occasions that the network’s market value exceeds $500 million.

Despite the expansion and increase in revenues, the network has suffered some setbacks in 1988 and 1989, which Crouch called in his newsletter “the year all hell broke loose!” These included:

- A previously announced plan to take over a frequency of the South African Broadcasting Co. has been stalled in the face of a competing application from a South African religious broadcasting group.

- A public dispute with the publisher of a Costa Mesa newsletter over charges that Trinity has been selling air time to the American Freedom Coalition, a group that has acknowledged substantial financial backing from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.

The most serious challenge facing Trinity is a long-simmering dispute with the National Religious Broadcasters over ethics and financial accountability, including an investigation by the NRB’s Ethics Committee, which is looking into Crouch’s business practices and the treatment of network employees. Although Crouch told congressional investigators in October, 1987, that he would join the NRB’s Ethics and Financial Integrity Commission, Trinity has failed to submit an application, according to the organization’s administrator, Arthur C. Borden. Membership in the commission is mandatory for continued membership in the NRB.

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BACKGROUND

Over the past three years, some of the best-known American televangelists have stumbled, fallen or temporarily left the airwaves: Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart over sex, Pat Robertson for politics, Oral Roberts as a result of dire appeals for money. Other religious broadcasters, like Jerry Falwell and Garden Grove’s Robert Schuller, acknowledge losing viewers and income as a result of the continuing distrust of all evangelists.

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