Byron Allen currently offers folks the weather conditions. Now he’s offering the information to go with it.
Allen Media Team, the consortium of media organizations that contains the Climate Channel, has bought the assets of the Black Information Channel, a Tallahassee, Florida outlet managed by Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan that declared bankruptcy in March. Allen intends to use the new acquire to create an viewers of Black individuals at a time when the media and advertising industries have grown ever more mindful of attempting to access diverse communities and populations.
“We are energized to have been chosen to receive the Black News Channel, which has about 300 million linear and digital subscribers,” reported Allen, the company’s founder and CEO, in a prepared assertion. “Allen Media Group will deliver a greatest-in-course community to serve the underserved African-American local community and the advertisers who want to arrive at this particularly important viewers. Also, we value the opportunity to supply cable operators, satellite providers, telcos, and electronic platforms diversity of ownership, voices, and viewpoints on their programming line-ups by acquiring a 100 p.c African-American owned community.”
The sale of the Black Information Channel assets was approved by Northern District of Florida, Tallahassee Division of the United States Personal bankruptcy Court docket. Black News Channel’s backers had formerly attempted to offer the enterprise to Ebony Studios LLC, a firm linked to Ulysses Lee “Junior” Bridgeman, owner of Ebony magazine, according to a court submitting.
In March, the enterprise abruptly knowledgeable dozens of staff members that they would be laid off. Founded by former GOP congressman J.C. Watts and broadcast govt Bob Brillante, Black News Channel articulated a mission to provide news for and about people today who aren’t covered in depth by other mainstream media retailers. Amid govt turnover, inadequate rankings and inner turmoil, on the other hand, Black News Channel hardly ever fulfilled its first aims in a successful vogue.
Under Allen Media Team, Black News Channel will sign up for Temperature Channel together with digital stores this kind of as Community Now, HBCU GO and TheGrio. Allen Media Team has also invested over $1 billion in the past 3 several years to receive 27 ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox affiliate marketers.
Black Information Channel has carriage on standard linear deals through Comcast, Constitution, Cox, DISH, DirecTV and Verizon. The network has around 45 million linear subscribers, Allen Media suggests, and the company hopes to expand that to 80 million more than the upcoming six months.