The 24-hour regional multicast channel targeting southern African Americans plans a first quarter launch. Plans include five hours of news a day.
Soul Of The South Diginet Set For 2012 Debut
Soul Of The South Network, a 24-hour regional broadcast network targeting African-Americans viewers in the South, will launch in the first quarter of 2012 offering entertainment, sports, and cultural programming along with five hours of live news daily.
“I’m so proud to lead the launch of Soul of the South, which will be the first broadcast network to speak directly to the lives and values of the more than 20 million African-Americans living in the South,” says Edwin V. Avent, its chairman-CEO. “We have met with stations in over 50 markets during our road show across the South and they are all excited by our concept of a regional African-American television network.”
A co-founder of Soul Of The South Network, Avent, after serving as Heart & Soul magazine’s publisher for six years where he rebuilt the publication into a viable brand among African-American female consumers, will now devote himself launching and running this television network.
“We live in a time when we have an African-American president and an African-American Republican frontrunner, yet we do not have a single African-American anchor on any of the nightly broadcast news shows,” says co-founder Carl McCaskill, Soul Of The South Network’s executive VP of business development and branding. “We see this as an opportunity. We will fill that void with five hours of daily news, with African-American news anchors and reporters at the helm and with a fresh perspective on everyday African-American life in the South,” McCaskill adds.
Headquartered in Little Rock, Ark., Soul Of The South Network’s president is Larry Morton, a digital broadcast pioneer and one of the founders of Retro TV. “I’m thrilled to partner with Edwin Avent and Carl McCaskill in the launch of this unique and very important digital platform,” Morton adds.
Soul Of The South’s launch schedule will include a two-hour morning news show based in Atlanta, a one-hour evening news broadcast, and Capitol Eye, an additional half-hour hosted news and opinion show focusing on Southern capitals and politics. The news broadcasts are co-productions with centralized newscast operator Independent Network News. During the first quarter of 2012, Soul Of The South will premiere two original programs: RadioFace, a quick-moving, comedic unscripted show hosted by radio personalities bantering from their studios on the news and headlines of the day, and Southern Soul Stories, which explores the lives of African-American icons of the South and the events, large and small, that shaped the region.
BRAND CONNECTIONS
Soul Of The South will showcase its full 2012 line-up of original shows during May upfronts.
Soul Of The South will offer its broadcast platform in markets with high concentrations of African-Americans in the South and several Northern hub cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Additional key Soul Of The South Network executives include: Jeff Burns Jr., former SVP of Johnson Publishing who will serve as EVP of marketing; Donald “Chip” Harwood of Princeton Media; and Ed Baruch of Allied Media, who will be distribution consultants. Fusion Studios, led by Jeff Lyle, is handling master control and signal delivery.
Comments (5)
Ellen Samrock says:
October 31, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Obviously, this network will target those who probably rely most on OTA television. So come band re-packing time, what is the government going to do? Start picking winners and losers among the minorities who depend on free TV? We’ve already heard from the geniuses at the CTIA who have opined that in times of disaster a community only needs one broadcast nation. I can just hear a similar argument now; we really only need one Hispanic or one Vietnamese or one African-American channel. If the potential consequences of spectrum reclamation weren’t so tragic, the jackass-ery behind it would be laughable.
len Kubas says:
October 31, 2011 at 4:36 pm
you sound like you’ve already given up. Band repacking is still born, to this point. The FCC explicitly lacks the jurisdiction, the Congress hasn’t passed a real budget in three or more years, but they have told the FCC repeatedly NO. There is much jackass-ery evident at the current FCC, and little is going on there that doesn’t seem to qualify. The federal government will have somewhat fewer fools come January 2013.
mike tomasino says:
October 31, 2011 at 5:48 pm
Icono, I certainly hope you’re a prophet! And you’re right, those of us who want to protect broadcast spectrum can’t give up now.
len Kubas says:
October 31, 2011 at 7:32 pm
agreed; let’s just not use phrases like “so, come band repacking” lest it become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ellen Samrock says:
October 31, 2011 at 10:34 pm
I’m certainly NOT giving up hope. I wrote this as a hypothetical ‘what if.’ And I don’t think anyone here needs your input as to what should and shouldn’t be written.