"The T.D. Jakes Show" has been canceled after only six months. Bob Sullivan, Tegna senior vice president of programming, said the cancellation came because of poor ratings. After half a year, the talk show had been viewed by only 60 percent of the country.
At first, "The T.D. Jakes Show" was aired on Tegna-owned stations and re-aired on OWN at 5 p.m. After OWN had experienced poor ratings, executives moved the show from daily evening airings to 8 a.m. on Sunday mornings. That didn't help enough to keep the show on the air.
Interview with Tamar Braxton
The talk show was already struggling to get viewers, but after an interview with reality star Tamar Braxton, the show lost a very large number of viewers because the bishop took sides with Braxton when she falsely accused her former co-hosts of being responsible for getting her fired. Many people posted on social media that Bishop Jakes mocked "The Real" and gave false information about the show just to make Tamar feel good about herself.
Bishop Jakes and Tamar actually made fun of "The Real" that is hosted by Loni Love, Tamera Mowry-Housley, Jeannie Mai and Adrienne Houghton. Braxton prayed that God would help the show, and Jakes laughed and said he didn't think God heard Tamar's prayer.
In other words, he insinuated that Tamar's former show was in such great trouble after her departure that even God couldn't help it.
After Braxton had shared her interview with Jakes on Instagram, fans of "The Real" said some negative things about the man of the cloth for encouraging such behavior. In fact, he was the one who said things worst than Tamar did.
After that interview, Jakes' own show never picked up additional viewers. Conversely, he lost viewers after being called "messy" and "shady."
Jakes didn't fact check
During the interview, Bishop Jakes told Braxton that "The Real" was struggling without her. That was far from the truth. Ratings for the show went up after Braxton was fired.
The talk show has been renewed for a fourth season, and in recent months it has had A-list celebrities as guests. Some of them have included Jennifer Lopez, Taraji P. Henson, and the Gabrielle Union. Those are not signs of a struggling talk show.
