Black News Channel shuts down days after ratings high
NEW YORK (AP) — The Black Information Channel has pulled the plug following the 2-12 months-aged undertaking unsuccessful to meet payroll and misplaced the backing of its most significant investor.
Princell Hair, the company’s president and CEO, told workers Friday in a memo that the information community was ceasing reside generation and would file for bankruptcy. BNC was available in some 50 million houses with cable and satellite but experienced unsuccessful to appeal to a lot of viewers.
The network, founded in 2020 by former GOP congressman J.C. Watts, employed more than 250 Black journalists and manufacturing staff very last 12 months in a relaunch next an financial investment by Jacksonville Jaguars proprietor Shahid Khan.
But it was regularly losing money, even with two rounds of layoffs, and Khan made a decision to quit investing in it even further. It is presently three weeks quick of payroll, a business spokesman mentioned.
Hair, a previous CNN govt, took above in the relaunch past 12 months. BNC introduced on contributors like Charles Blow, columnist at The New York Situations, and commentator Marc Lamont Hill. Correspondents were stationed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and Philadelphia.
The conclude arrived even as BNC recorded its major viewers ever this 7 days with its live protection of the Judiciary Committee listening to for U.S. Supreme Court docket nominee Decide Ketanji Brown Jackson, Hair said.
He informed workers that their contributions had been amazing, but “due to hard market place disorders and global economic pressures, we have been unable to meet our economical ambitions, and the timeline afforded to us has operate out.”
Setting up a network is especially tricky at a time when consumers have so numerous decisions and many are slicing cable or satellite cords.
“Remember that we crafted a little something fantastic in this article,” Hair explained in his memo. “BNC, or one thing incredibly shut to it, will undoubtedly return at some point, since the planet demands it, and all of you have demonstrated it can be performed.”
Information of BNC’s shutdown was initially claimed by the Los Angeles Instances.
The Countrywide Association of Black Journalists said Friday that it was seeking at ways to support associates that have been thrown out of function by the shutdown.
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This story has been up to date to correct the identify of the Black Information Channel’s chief trader. He is Shahid Khan, not Shahid Kahn.