Black News Channel Is Shutting Down

Black News Channel, the TV news service launched in early 2020 to be a voice for people of color, has ceased operations, reports The L-A Times.

A memo to employees from BNC’s chief executive, Princell Hair, confirmed The L-A Times’ earlier report of the closure plans. The company is filing for bankruptcy, and live programming will end at 2 p.m. PDT/5 p.m. EDT. The channel will air repeats for the rest of the month.

The Tallahassee, Fla.-based outlet, whose majority stakeholder is Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan, failed to meet payroll on Friday, a day after telling employees that paychecks would be delayed.

The announcement means BNC’s staff of 230 — a vast majority of whom are people of color — are out of work. They have been told benefits will last through next week and there will be no severance, according to one person briefed on the plans.

Khan was no longer willing to invest further, according to people briefed on the matter. The channel has been shopped to a number of media companies, including Byron Allen’s Entertainment Studios, but there were no takers. The company endured several rounds of layoffs in recent months.

Black News Channel was conceived by a group headed up by former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) and media executive Bob Brillante. The channel launched after Khan made a $50-million investment in 2019, making him the majority shareholder.

The channel reached more than 50 million cable and satellite households, but was unable to generate a significant audience.

The entity entered the cable news landscape at a time when consumers were shifting away from traditional TV. Most video-based TV start-ups and niche services are turning to streaming platforms.

The average audience for BNC was fewer than 10,000 viewers, according to Nielsen data, though it had been growing in recent months.

The failure to meet payroll and the expected announcement of a shutdown stunned and angered employees at the channel. Many of the staffers came to BNC from larger, established news organizations because they believed in the mission of a TV service that provided news and information for a diverse audience.

But BNC, which delayed its launch a few times, had to overcome some early stumbles. When Watts announced the network, he signaled that it would have a conservative slant, which likely turned off a large segment of the potential audience. He touted a possible show with right-wing radio host and former California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder.

The company also had to deal with a class-action discrimination lawsuit filed by former and current female employees. The suit alleged that the women were being paid less than their male counterparts and that managers complained that they were “insufficiently feminine.”