Bounce TV, the broadcast network aimed at African-American viewers, has gotten added carriage on Charter Communications in several major markets.
Much of the additional carriage comes on systems acquired by Charter when it bought Time Warner Cable. The markets affected include New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Raleigh-Durham.
In those markets, Bounce TV is broadcast on the secondary digital signals of stations owned by Univision. Secondary signals don’t always get carriage on cable but can be received by viewers with digital antennae.
Bounce TV was dropped by Time Warner Cable in the New York market in 2015, before the cable operator was acquired by Charter. Time Warner Cable also did not carry Bounce TV in Los Angeles.
Rev. Martin Luther King III, one of the founders of Bounce TV in 2011, sent a letter to Time Warner Cable to express his “strong disappointment” with Time Warner’s decision.
“Warner Cable continues to disappoint African Americans in the two biggest cities in the United States. This does not bode well in an emerging America, a nation becoming more diverse by the day. Bounce has worked diligently to identify and grow best practices for widening the pipeline for underrepresented groups. We remain committed to do so, and are prepared to take further action if necessary, but we are hopeful that you will return Bounce TV to Time Warner Cable in Manhattan as well as add the network in Los Angeles,” King wrote. “The African American community and I look forward to your response.”
While the proposed transaction was being reviewed by the government, Bounce TV supported Charter’s purchase of Time Warner Cable, along with its affiliate Bright House Networks.
In a statement in June, former U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young, another cofounder of Bounce TV, noted that “Charter has long been a strong supporter of minority-owned networks like Bounce TV and we believe that these transactions are in the public interest and will be beneficial to Bounce TV viewers, African American and all ethnicities.”
