Home
July 03, 2012
Basketball legend Earvin 'Magic' Johnson expanded his media business empire on 27 June, partnering with GMC TV to launch cable network ASPiRE in 16 top African-American markets, including New York, Atlanta, Washington DC and Chicago. Coca-Cola Co., Chrysler, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., L'Oreal and Nationwide Insurance have all signed on, and with distributors Comcast, and Time Warner Cable, Magic Johnson Enterprises expects to debut to the tune of seven million homes, growing to 12 million by year's end and 40 million within two years. Johnson's is the first of ten minority-owned channels which Comcast was obligated to support as part of its agreement with the FCC and DOJ to diversify content when it purchased NBC in 2011.
Steering clear of the poorly reviewed 1998 talk show The Magic Hour, Johnson, who majored in communications studies and started in media at the same time he began his basketball career, hopes to demonstrate a demand for minority programming in a way that other predecessors including BET, TV One, and the struggling OWN, have not. Programming is set to appeal to an older audience with inspirational music, comedy, documentaries and short films that focus on African-American accomplishments. Current hosts include award-winning actor Laurence Fishburne, comedian Jonathan Slocumb, actor Omari Hardwick, and Grammy Award-winning musician Esperanza Spalding, but future shows will aim to create original opportunities for black artists.
ASPiRE Network wagers that there is an audience for family oriented African American programming to set itself apart from the younger focused BET network and similar older African American programming from Centric, TV One and upcoming Black Heritage Network. Centric (formerly BET J) reaches about 46m households and has seen moderate success in terms of carriage. TV One launched in 2004 and has seen enough of a success to now reach over 50m homes and if ASPiRE overcomes the challenges of a newly-launched channel, we expect a similar type of outcome.
ASPiRE will need to make its programming compelling enough for its audience to keep tuning in, and won't be able to rely on star power alone as demonstrated by OWN, The Oprah Winfrey Network. Though we don't anticipate ASPiRE to receive any carriage fee revenue for another two or more years, expecting it to be an ad revenue only network, ASPiRE is off to a solid start with the backing of major advertisers and carriage on the two largest cable operators in the US.
Tags:
