The Black News Channel, an original 24/7 news offering to serve African American viewers, will flip the switch in the new year.
BNC, which had planned to launch Nov. 15, pushed back its premiere to take advantage of fast-moving digital delivery platforms, the network announced Wednesday. Those carriers include wireless cellular services and streaming video services that offer live linear programming.
Being on smartphones will make it easier to attract millennials, 98% of whom have cellphones, which are the primary news device for more than two-thirds of them, said J.C. Watts, co-founder and BNC chairman. "Those devices on a day-by-day basis become more critically important," he said.
The network expects to reach agreements that would more than triple its audience size, beyond its originally estimated 33 million cable TV and satellite households in top African American TV markets, including New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Already secured: carriage deals from Comcast, Charter and Dish Network.
Jan. 6 will give us a chance to be on more devices, and we think that makes sense for us in terms of serving our demographic, and it obviously makes good business sense," Watts told USAToday.
Watts, a former Republican U.S. congressman from Oklahoma who served as a CNN political commentator and president of Feed the Children, has been developing plans for a minority-owned and -operated network for more than a decade. The financial crisis of 2008 was one major hurdle that required postponing the plans.
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