Black Television News Channel: Coming in 2009

In early 2009, former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts plans to launch a 24-hour African American News Channel, called Black Television News Channel (BTN). Comcast and DishNet have already pledged support. “There’s a whole lot more to the African American community than entertainment and sports,” says Watts.

Last month, Politico published a Q & A with Watts about the project.

Watts, who was the only black Republican in Congress during the eight years he served, told Politico he’s launching the channel because “The African-American community is, I think, news-starved and underserved.” He makes some excellent points about missing content that would likely interest African Americans.

And in this NewsOK.com interview, Watts elaborated: “I saw some data that said when you looked at the top 10 TV shows in the white community and you looked at the top 10 TV shows in the black community, none overlapped, with the exception of ‘ER’, which was number one in the white community and number 10 in the black community. So I started asking questions: Why? There was a time when we all got our language and we got our culture fed through three TV networks. Today it’s totally different, and people I think receive the news and they want to hear the news in ways that they want to listen to it. ...None of the mainstream news sources target the African-American community in ways that they actually want to listen.”

What would this channel do differently from, say, CNN? In the Politico interview, Watts mentioned covering the lagging rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. For a while, the mainstream media doggedly followed this story. But now the tens of thousands of still-displaced folks (many of whom are black), seems largely forgotten. The current ripples from Katrina are no less sensational or shocking than what happened at the Superdome.

One way to reach communities of difference is quite simply to cover the stories they care about. For instance, Aug. 29 will mark the third anniversary of Katrina. Are you covering which improvements are happening in the Ninth Ward?

Interestingly, when asked if the channel is being launched just as the first African American president might be inaugurated, Watts says, “Whatever Obama is doing, it’s news. If he becomes president, then that surely would provide a lot of content—but I think news is more than presidential elections or the war in Iraq.”

Watts claims to know what this community needs. He probably can’t provide it all by himself, either. There’s definitely room to grow in this news market. Once this channel launches, be sure to watch it—and watch the reaction to it, online and elsewhere, especially from African Americans. Whether it succeeds or fails, BTN will likely yield valuable lessons about how to serve African American communities better.

Given that recent research from the Pew Center on The People and the Press shows that online video is especially popular with African American internet users, it would be great if BTN also included a strong online component. We’ll see what happens.

Comments