Black News Channel

During a TVNewsCheck webinar, the founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group, said two years of talk from big brands and their agencies had yielded little progress on the effort to convince advertisers to devote more of their budgets to Black-owned media companies. He called for more sponsorships to help startups and denounced the practice of shifting spending from Black-targeted programming to Black-owned media.

Court approves the $11 million sale of the bankrupt news channel’s assets to Byron Allen’s organization.

Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group has emerged as the leading candidate to purchase Black News Channel for $11 million. According to a filing submitted to the Northern District of Florida Bankruptcy Court last week, Allen Media Group and Ebony Studios were actively pursuing a purchase of BNC assets since the early stages of the sale process. BNC first sought a deal with Ebony Studios, an inclusive production platform launched in April aiming to develop content across film, television, audio and digital properties. The pair negotiated in good faith regarding its potential designation as a Stalking Horse Bidder, but weren’t able to finalize an agreement and their limited exclusivity period was allowed to expire on June 3. Now, BNC has asked the court to enter an order authorizing and approving the designation of Allen Media Group as the stalking horse bidder and its bid for substantially all of BNC’s assets used or related to the conduct of its business.

Black News Channel — which shut down operations on Friday, just two years after making a splashy debut — has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Florida. In its Monday filing, the Tallahassee-based network listed $10 million-$50 million in liabilities, and estimated between 200 and 999 creditors are owed money.

After months of uncertainty, Black News Channel is shutting down on Friday just two years after its launch. Multiple employees said they were notified individually that Friday would be the last day of live programming for the network, launched in February 2020 by former Oklahoma Republican congressman J.C. Watts and veteran broadcast executive Bob Brillante to target Black audiences they felt were underserved by other news outlets.

Thirteen women are suing the Black News Channel for gender discrimination, accusing the Florida-based network of unequal pay for female employees and a workplace culture that forced them “to conform to sexist or misogynistic stereotypes about how women are supposed to behave.”

Black News Channel, which is known as BNC, announced layoffs just days before the Christmas holiday. “I am reaching out to you today with some very unfortunate news about a reduction in our workforce,” said President and CEO Princell Hair in an internal memo. It was not immediately clear how many staffers will be impacted by the cuts, but BNC employs roughly 300 people.

The nearly two-year-old channel goes in-depth on issues for people of color. But can it succeed in a shifting TV landscape?

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp talks with Aisha Mills, host of the new show AMplify on Black News Channel, about where her show will sit amid the bombastic offerings in cable’s nightly news landscape and her vision for programming that illuminates our better selves.

BNC Go is tailored to suit the interests, active lifestyles and consumption patterns of Black millennial and Gen Z audiences. It will debut Sept. 13 on Amazon Fire TV, Pluto, Roku, Tubi, Samsung, Vizio and more with 18 hours of original content daily.

Seven lessons for your newsroom from the fast-growing Black News Channel.

The up-and-coming cable network broadens its reach and revamps its show lineup, signing high-profile commentators Charles Blow and Marc Lamont Hill. Above, Mike Hill and Sharon Reed, from left with Black News Channel CEO Princell Hair, will host a weekday morning show on the channel premiering in March.

Black News Channel has launched on satellite TV platform DirecTV, which said it also will launch Cleo TV before the end of the year to greater diversify its program offerings.

Princell Hair, newly-installed CEO off the fledging Black News Channel, brings a wealth of general management experience to a venture that had the bad luck to launch in the pandemic. One of his biggest challenges is the network’s COVID-stunted reach.

The former NBC and CNN executive joins J.C. Watts to lead the 24-hour news network.

The goal of the cable network that debuted Feb. 10 is to reach black audiences with stories that give a broader perspective about their community than what other networks provide. “We are more than athletes and entertainers, and on the hard news side, we’re more than crime,” said former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts, BNC’s chairman.

Gary Worldlaw, BNC’s vice president of news: “At 6 a.m. on February the 10th, we’re going to give the nation a look at the black community that has not been seen on any other network. Our mission is to illuminate and to tell the truth. We’re not partisan. We’re not political. We’re journalists. And we want to give good stories from the peoples’ perspective. We should be the peoples’ network.”

After pushing back its debut from last November, the nascent cable news channel will go live during Black History Month.

Gary Wordlaw, the local TV news veteran who has been tapped to oversee all content for the new Black News Channel, says the new service will strive to “just tell the truth, report the facts of the story.” (Photo: Wendy Moger-Bross)

Gary Wordlaw, VP of news and programming at the soon-to-launch Black News Channel cable network, will discuss the new venture in the keynote interview at TVNewsCheck’s seventh annual NewsTECHForum in December.

Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan has become an investor in the nascent cable news network founded by J.C. Watts Jr. and Bob Brilliante prior to its launch next month.

Black News Channel is constructing a $26 million facility in Tallahassee, Fla., anchored by technology from Bitcentral, Vizrt and Sony. Its engineering chief, Kenny Elcock, explains how interoperability is key.

Former cable lobbyist/executive Bob Brillante (right) and former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts are sure it has. Their Black News Channel is slated to go live to at least 33 million MVPD homes on Nov. 15, hoping to attract black viewers and steal ratings from CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and others. In a TVN Tech feature tomorrow, we’ll look at the $26 million facility the network is building in Tallahassee, Fla., and the major roles that Bitcentral, Vizrt, Sony and others are playing.

A step up from past LCD video walls, the new LED technology is increasingly featuring in new news set designs, enabling crisper images and more flexibility.