Dr. Phil’s Media Company Faces Major Lawsuit Following Its Bankruptcy

The bankruptcy woes of Dr. Phil’s company just keep piling up.

A new lawsuit filed today in Texas federal court from Trinity Broadcasting Network alleges that Dr. Phil McGraw and his company, Merit Street Media, signed a $500 million, 10-year deal with the Christian TV network and then never delivered a single episode of his flagship television show.

Merit Street Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 2, less than two years after McGraw launched the company. It laid off over a third of its staff in August 2024, then laid off even more staff in June of this year.

Merit, the upstart TV channel which McGraw promised would be “one of the most widely distributed startup networks in modern history,” featured talent like Nancy Grace, Steve Harvey, and Bear Grylls, in addition to McGraw himself. The network was a joint partnership between McGraw and Trinity Broadcasting.

In response to TBN’s lawsuit, McGraw’s spokesperson told THR that 214 new episodes of Dr. Phil aired on Merit, and “to say otherwise is absolutely false.”

Merit Street has claimed that TBN didn’t execute the terms of their joint network, and that shortly after the network’s launch Trinity Broadcasting “began to abuse its power as a controlling shareholder” by forcing Merit to sit through various expensive distribution deals rather than Merit’s own network of local TV stations.

Additionally, Merit alleges that TBN double-dipped by forcing the new network’s shows to be produced at TBN’s in-house studios, which harmed the quality of the network by providing “shoddy production services.”

TBN’s lawsuit seeks a court order for the rights to all of Merit Street’s content, in addition to McGraw handing over the rights to his library of older Dr. Phil episodes.