Week one of Tegna and Debmar-Mercury’s four-week test of T.D. Jakes launched Monday on four Tegna-owned stations, and included interviews with the mothers of such high-profile victims as Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice.
The show debuted Monday with an episode on the phenomenon of public shaming, in which parents discipline their children by videotaping them and then posting those videos online.
Other episodes during the week featured guests whose bodies and minds have been broken but who keep fighting, including a woman whose boyfriend threw industrial-strength acid in her face and who has faced 13 surgeries with more to come; a 19-year-old man who was prosecuted harshly for having sex with a 14-year-old girl who told him she was 17 and, on Friday, a town-hall format that uses Jakes’ established social networks to ask him questions.
Thursday’s episode featured the mothers of children who have been killed in circumstances that appear to be racially-biased, such as Martin’s shooting at the hand of neighborhood-watch captain George Zimmerman or Michael Brown’s killing by Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson.
The talk show starring Bishop T.D. Jakes is airing in a four-week test on Tegna’s (formerly Gannett) WFAA Dallas, WKYC Cleveland, WXIA Atlanta and KARE Minneapolis through Sept. 11. It's also available every evening on YouTube. The show is produced by distributor Debmar-Mercury, Tegna Media, 44 Blue Productions and Jakes’ own TDJ Enterprises and EnLight Productions.
