Atlanta-based television executives for a network targeting African Americans flipped the programming switch at noon Monday, airing “The Wiz” on 56 television stations nationwide.
But while leaders at Bounce TV tout the network’s ability to air in 50 percent of the country’s media markets, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston and San Francisco, they know that’s not enough to secure key dollars from major nationwide advertisers.
Bounce is airing a mix of movies, sports, faith-based shows and eventually original programming. The network will also show reruns of “Soul Train” as well as “Judge Hatchett” and “Inside the Game,” a long-running syndicated show about sports at historically black colleges.
Bounce TV’s founders and original financial backers include Martin Luther King III and former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young. Additional architects of the project, Ryan Glover and Jonathan Katz, are former Turner Broadcasting executives.
“Candidly speaking, there have been a lot of starters and stoppers in the African-American TV network space,” said Ryan Glover, Bounce TV president. “It took months for me to ensure in my community that we were real,” and will carry different programming than chief competitors BET and Centric, operated by New York-based Viacom, or TV-One, owned by Lanham, Md.-based Radio One.
Still, Glover said he is frequently asked what’s different between Bounce and the other networks. First, Bounce's programming appears on over-the-air stations and not cable. Secondly, he network hopes to add original programming. Glover didn't name specifics other than it won't be tied to any one actor, director or genre.
“We’re all catering and creating content for our consumer base, but we don’t all march to the beat of the same drum,” he said.
In Atlanta and some other cities, consumers will find Bounce on a digital sub-channel, or “diginet,” a non-cable digital tier. Here, the network is on 36.2, the digital sub-channel operated by WATL-TV. Comcast will air Bounce on channel 244. In Atlanta, the network will use the production and operational resources of CSE, a sports, entertainment and TV production agency. The signal is running out of Encompass, a digital media company.
Diginets started after 2009 when the new digital spectrum allowed broadcast networks to air multiple subchannels.
“This is a very difficult space, and we were the last one in,” said Jeff Wolf, Bounce TV’s executive vice president of distribution. “Most broadcasters say, ‘how do I really make money off of it,’ but we are directing our programming toward a specific, underserved viewer," and eventually will be profitable.
Executives acknowledge that Bounce needs to expand its footprint and reach a certain threshold to be rated by Nielsen Media Research before it can capture key dollars from general market advertising. Wolf said that will take another year.
“We have a long way to really build this out,” Wolf said. “We have a lot of people who are looking at us and want us to broadcast before they make the decision.”
Wolf said the network chose carefully when looking for broadcast partners.
“If we were to take just a station and have them put this on their digital spectrum and hope that it works, that would be an uphill battle,” Wolf said. A success, on the other hand, is if a local station takes its nightly news program and airs it on the digital subchannel along with Bounce programming, he said.
Wolf thought he was taking a break after 23 years of working in distribution for Sony Pictures TV and King World Productions when Glover and Katz called him. It was a statistic that sold him: there are 13 million Hispanic households in the U.S. that have access to cable and broadcast networks targeted to their demographic. For the 14 million African-American households, the cable networks are few, and there is no over-the-air network specifically for their demographic.
“If we do this the right way, then no one can touch us,” Wolf said.
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