A group of Republican businessmen is launching what they are calling the first 24-hour news channel for Black people.

The Black News Channel (BNC) launched on Monday in honor of Black History Month, according to NBC News. The channel was founded by former Oklahoma Rep. J.C. Watts (R), along with CEO Bob Brillante and COO Jim Zerwekh.

The effort is backed by majority investor and Republican donor Shad Khan, AP News reports. They've already secured deals with Spectrum, Xfinity X1 and Dish with plans to add Sling, Vizio Smart TVs, Xumo and Roku Channel.

“I am a big believer in the fact that we have a number of communities, obviously especially the African American, who are underserved. We know the mission, but I’m hoping that as time goes on this becomes a bridge to connect all the cultures, including obviously south Asian, which I am. This is a great worthwhile cause. I want to see it happen,” Khan said in a phone interview with AP News in October.

“This is a chance for me to make an impact on how African Americans report and consume news and related programming, how their voices are amplified and heard, and how all of us can better connect socially, culturally, economically and more,” Khan said according to USA Today.

According to NBC, the BNC is projected to reach 33 million homes in New York City, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Atlanta. Comcast and Dish called the BNC a "subscription video-on-demand service."

“Today, information is so targeted to groups. Every demographic out there has a venue that they can access for news information, culture, wellness, etc. Except for the African American community,” Watts told NBC.

In another interview with USA Today, Watts said the channel is “a CNN, Fox News, MSNBC type of organization that will be culturally specific to the African American community.”

Watts was the first Black person elected House Republican Conference chair in 1998 but eventually retired after being pushed out over disagreements about the party's message.

After years as a lobbyist in Washington D.C., he decided in 2008 to create the BNC in coordination with Comcast. It took more than a decade of work with failed starts to get the channel off the ground.

The original start date was moved to February 10 so they could sign more distribution deals and work on their app which they say will expand their viewer base to a potential 75 million viewers, according to USA Today.

Despite the heavy Republican support from Khan, Brillante, Zerwekh and Watts, the BNC's vice president of news and programming Gary Wordlaw told The Baltimore Sun that the channel would not have a political tilt.

"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," Wordlaw said.

“News has grown and changed and a lot of people don’t like the way it’s changed, especially on cable news. Identity politics rules the day. We are not going to take sides,” Wordlaw told USA Today.

According to Watts, conservative commentator and ardent Trump supporter Larry Elder will be featured on the channel. The anchors for the primetime hours will be former CNN news host Fred Hickman, former Central Florida TV journalist Laverne McGee and sports anchor Anthony Amey. TV personality Jane Marks is planning to co-host a daily show about women’s issues.

Our very own BNC prime anchors Laverne McGee and Fred Hickman sat down with our financial owner Shahid Khan to talk all things BNC, Coming up on BNC Prime at 7 pm est. #blacknewschannel
#BNC
#BNCPrime
pic.twitter.com/Jlokzj506B

— BNC (@BlackNewsC) February 10, 2020

“As we know, females control the sets and if I can create enough of a buzz among those two groups of women, we are going to get viewers,” said Wordlaw, who has spent more than 50 years working at news stations across the country.

“In the Black community, we have very conservative Black people. We have very liberal Black people. But we tend only to put one side on television. This network is going to seek to put all sides on TV,” he added.

Watts told NBC the channel has partnered with Black trade organization National Newspaper Publishers Association to provide localized bureaus outside of their hub in Tallahassee.

Benjamin Chavis, leader of the trade association made up of over 200 Black-owned community newspapers across the country, told NBC that the BNC would feature local reporting done by their national bureaus. The channel will also pull from a wide pool of journalism talent at HBCUs across the country.

“One of the things I witnessed in my 30-plus years in the Black press is that there's been a tendency for Black news to be marginalized and under-distributed. To me, there’s an opportunity for the Black press to fill that void,” Chavis told NBC.

“The mainstream media covers the pathology of Black America. They don't cover the sociology of it. The success stories are important for our community, to see Black Americans striving for and achieving excellence,” he added.

NBC noted that Black news outlets have suffered since their heyday in the early 1900s. Despite flourishing online news communities, legendary print outlets like The Chicago Defender and Ebony have gone out of print, leaving gaps in Black news consumption that Chavis believes the BNC can fill.

NBC pressed Chavis about Watts' background as a Republican, but he said the channel was an opportunity for both sides of the political aisle to work together for something worthwhile.

“Even though I'm a Democrat and he is a Republican, I felt it was time for Black people in the media to work together without getting involved or entrenched in the partisan divide,” Chavis said.

TVNewsCheck noted that it has been notoriously difficult for Black news channels to get off the ground over the past few years. Roland Martin's News Now One launched in 2013 but was canceled just four years later. BET's Nightly News also lasted four years before getting the ax.

J.C.-Watts

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