E.W. Scripps said that it is getting closer to selling off its Bounce TV multicast network.

“We are progressing nicely with our efforts to sell the Bounce TV network and some non-strategic real estate assets,” Scripps CEO Adam Symson said in the company’s second-quarter earnings release.

The sale of Bounce and other assets would help Scripps reduce its heavy debt load.

Bounce is part of Scripps’ national networks division. During the second quarter, segment profit for Scripps Networks fell to $37.7 million from $60.3 million a year ago. 

Revenue was down 9.7% from the previous year.

Scripps acquired Bounce when it bought Katz Networks in 2017

Scripps has been pushing into the sports world, with women’s basketball and soccer on its Ion network and adding NHL hockey games on its stations in Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Symson said sports was helping Scripps sell advertising.

“While the results of last year’s national advertising upfront are still impacting our quarterly results in the Scripps Networks division, we are seeing a better performance in this season’s upfront sales cycle,” he said.

“With commitments from the majority of our advertising agency clients, we have volume increases of low single digits over last year. Sports has been the differentiator. Our WNBA Friday-night franchise on Ion has so far showcased three games where viewership surpassed 1 million, proving to advertisers that ION can deliver them to significantly large sports audiences,” Symson said.

Overall, Scripps reported a second-quarter net loss of $13 million, or 15 cents a share, compared to a $682.4 million loss, or $8.10 a share, a year ago when the company took a big writeoff on Scripps Networks. 

Revenue fell 2% to $574 million.

Scripps’s local media division had segment profit of $88.1 million, up from $81 million a year ago.

Revenue rose 3.6% to $365 million.

Distribution revenue dipped to $194 million from $195 million a year ago.

Core advertising revenues — excluding political spending — was down 6.9% to $139 million. Political revenue was $28.2 million, compared to $3.8 million a year ago, a non-presidential election year.

The company said it expects to see a record level of political ad spending in 2024, even if spending hits the low end of its forecast, which is now between $270 million and $290 million. Previously, Scripps said it expected to garner political ad revenue of $240 million to $270 million.

“Election spending remains robust for the U.S. Senate races in Montana and Ohio, and at least four states where we have stations have placed reproductive rights issues on their November ballots,” Symson said. “We are beginning to see additional upside from Vice President Kamala Harris’s entry into the presidential race. Overall, this year’s political ad revenue performance for broadcast television is a testament to our durability as a brand-safe platform for political candidates and campaigns

Bounce TV is lending support to the Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, integrating the youth mentorship organization into an episode of its original series Johnson.

In the season three finale, scheduled to air October 7, one of the characters — Greg, played by series creator Deji LaRay — signs up to mentor a teen and learns more about Big Brothers Big Sisters.

“Bounce serves as a pivotal voice and platform for Black communities, making this collaboration especially powerful,” Big Brothers Big Sisters president and CEO Artis Stevens said. “Our partnership with Bounce enables us to demonstrate the transformative power of mentorship, especially within communities of color. Through this episode of Johnson we are shifting perceptions about the time and expertise required to be a mentor, showing that you don’t need to be perfect, you just need to be present, to make an impact.”

Bounce will also host BBBS mentors (“Bigs”) and mentees (“Littles”) for a “Bigs and Littles” episode watch party on October 7 at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta.

As part of the watch party, high school-aged guests will have the opportunity to meet with David Hudson, head of original programming for Scripps, for a Q&A. The campaign will also be supported and amplified across social media by both BBBS and Bounce-affiliated accounts.

“Over three seasons, Johnson has established itself as a series that isn’t afraid to correct stereotypes of Black men, and partnering with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America works well to do just that,” Hudson said.

Johnson is shot in Atlanta and produced in partnership with Eric C. Rhone and Cedric The Entertainer’s A Bird & A Bear Entertainment, Deji LaRay (the show’s creator) and Thomas Q. Jones’s Midnight Train Productions. LaRay and Jones serve as showrunners and executive producers.

Bounce Tv and theGrio will commemorate the Juneteenth holiday with documentary and special programming airing over the holiday weekend.

Bounce TV on June 19 will premiere Xernona Clayton: A life in Black and White,
a documentary celebrating the life of one of the most unheralded civil rights icons and African American pioneers of our time, according to the network. 

From Clayton's years working as an aide and close friend to Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King through her pioneering broadcasting career – including the creation of the Trumpet Awards – the documentary provides a march through Clayton’s nearly century-long life, said Bounce. 

Also on the 19th, the Allen Media Group-owned service theGrio will air the 4th Annual Freedom Forward: Juneteenth Special, which will feature appearances by Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts and comedian Roy Wood Jr., as well as a performance from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. The one-hour special will be hosted by theGrio Daily host Natasha Alford from New York City and theGrio columnist and podcast host Panama Jackson from Washington D.C., said the service.

The two specials join CNN's June 19 Juneteenth: A Global Celebration for Freedom primetime concert special featuring such performers as Miguel, Kirk Franklin, SWV, Davido, Coi Leray and Jodeci.

The National Cable Television Cooperative reached a multiyear affiliation deal with Katz Networks.

The agreement makes Katz’s networks: Bounce, Court TV, Court TV Mystery, Grit, Laff and streaming service Brown Sugar available to the 750 broadband and cable operators who are part of the NCTC.

“We’re thrilled to strike this agreement with NCTC and we look forward to building strong partnerships with their members,” said Jeffrey Wolf, Chief Distribution Officer, Katz Networks.

Katz. a division of the E.W. Scripps Co., operate mulit-platform networks that target specific demographics. Many of the networks were launched by TV stations as digital broadcast services, but more recently have been available via cable and streaming.

The Independence Day premiere of Netflix's horror-themed series Stranger Things leads a light schedule of show premieres over the July 4 week.

The third season of Stranger Things continues the exploits of five teenage friends on the cusp of adulthood trying to figure out how to grow up without growing apart who eventually come together to fight evil enemies, according to Netflix. 

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting this week on cable networks and streaming services:

July 1 -- Divorce (returning series) -- HBO

July 4 -- Into the Dark: Culture Shock (horror) -- Hulu

July 7 -- Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian (reality) -- E!

July 7 -- Saints & Sinners (drama) -- Bounce

In light of a guilty verdict Thursday in Bill Cosby’s sexual assault trial, digital broadcast network Bounce has pulled reruns of The Cosby Show, but cable network TV One continues to air the series.

Bounce in a statement Thursday said it is “removing” The Cosby Show from its schedule. The decision comes hours after the show’s star, Bill Cosby, was found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault for drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004.

RELATED: Bill Cosby Found Guilty In Sexual Assault Trial 

African-American targeted TV One was airing The Cosby Show at press time as part of its daily 5 pm to 8 pm programming block the network has scheduled for the series. The network could not be reached for comment as to whether it plans to eventually pull the series. 

The Cosby Show ran on NBC from 1984-1992. 

Bounce TV’s SVOD movie service Brown Sugar is now available on Amazon Fire TV, the company announced Thursday.

Amazon customers with Fire TV or a Fire TV Stick can now access the $3.99 per month service, which features popular African-American-themed movies from the 1970s and 1980s, said network officials.

Brown Sugar, which launched last November, is already available for Amazon Kindle Fire tablets as well as for mobile phones and tablets in the Amazon Appstore, Google Play Store and iTunes App Store, and for computers at www.BrownSugar.com. 

Brown Sugar features such great movies as Dolemite, Jackie Brown, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Foxy Brown, Cooley High, Blacula, Don’t Be a Menace to South Central, Pride, A Soldier’s Story, Black Caesar, Which Way Is Up?, Hammer, Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip, Car Wash and The Original Gangstas as well as acclaimed documentaries such as More Than a Game, chronicling the early days of LeBron James.

On Tuesday nights at 9 o’clock on Bounce TV, Tamela and David Mann play a fictional married couple in the original sitcom Mann & Wife, recently back for a third season.

Starting this Tuesday (April 4), the Manns are also starring in a new unscripted series about their real lives, The Manns, at 8 p.m. on basic-cable network TV One.

The gospel-singing duo — stars of the play, movie and TBS TV-series versions of Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns, though as father and daughter, not husband and wife — told The Wire that in a perfect world, the shows would be scheduled on different nights. They’re confident, though, that viewers looking for good, family-themed television will find and watch both series.

David Mann even coined the tagline of “The Manns’ Takeover on Tuesday Nights” for the two-hour block of Mann family programming on two different African-American focused networks.

Tamela Mann said she likes the authenticity of doing the reality series because it allows her to be in a more relaxed, family element, whereas David Mann said both the scripted show and the docuseries offer viewers family-friendly content that counters some of the more salacious programming from cable networks.

TV producers “offered ratchet, so viewers now expect to see ratchet,” David Mann said, using a term website Urban Dictionary defines as, in part, diva behavior. “But there’s an audience for family programming.”

The March 28 return of Mann & Wife — in which the two play a newly married couple with a blended family of children from different marriages — drew nearly 450,000 viewers to become the most-watched original sitcom telecast in Bounce TV’s short history, the multicast network said, citing Nielsen.

TV One, in announcing The Manns series in February, called the Manns “a great modern-day example of a family that works together, plays together and prays together.” (A previous reality series about the family, It’s a Mann’s World, aired on BET in 2015 and 2016.)

Tamela and David said that, despite their busy TV schedules, their marriage and family remain their top priority. “We put God first, then our marriage and family — everything else follows that,” said Tamela, who will appear on TV One on Sunday, April 9, as part of the network’s taped coverage of the gospel music-themed Stellar Awards ceremony, where she took home six awards.
— R. Thomas Umstead

For Charter, Job Creation Starts At the Home Office
Charter Communications’s plans to keep adding thousands of employees, following last year’s acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, earned chairman and CEO Tom Rutledge a March 24 visit with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Many of those thousands of jobs are to be at call centers. But the second-biggest U.S. cable operator also has been adding corporate-office jobs across the country, including its headquarters in downtown Stamford, Conn.

Sources tell The Wire Charter is starting to look for additional office space in Stamford to expand into — preferably in a building Charter could actually put its name on.

Rutledge moved Charter’s HQ to Stamford from St. Louis in late 2012, after receiving incentives from the state of Connecticut pegged to creating jobs there. Charter shares the 15-floor building at 400 Atlantic St. with other tenants, and continues to move into additional space there, but doesn’t own the building and can’t stick its brand on it prominently.

Charter wouldn’t comment, and sources said nothing was happening imminently along the lines of expanding the company’s footprint in its new hometown.
— Kent Gibbons

‘Simpsons’ Showrunner Tries Some New Tricks to Keep a Classic Current
More than 600 episodes into its run, Fox’s The Simpsons remains keen to try some new things to keep the show current, showrunner Al Jean says. It was a year ago that The Simpsons featured Homer live at the end of an episode, with viewers tweeting questions and comments his way. The show will give the next live honors to Bart at Comic-Con, Jean reports.

“We’ll have Bart animated live on the screen as he answers questions from people who are there,” Jean told The Wire and other outlets during a Fox call.

The show remains “adaptable” to new technological developments, the showrunner said, and “people want to work with us because of who we are.”

The Sunday, April 2, episode touched on current events just a bit, as Mr. Burns, disappointed with how Yale operates, decides to open a for-profit university. His professors have more star power than anything one might have found at Trump University. Jason Alexander was tasked with assembling teachers, and came up with Jeopardy! star Ken Jennings, financial wiz Suze Orman, scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson and screenwriting teacher Robert McKee.

“The topic is a really good one and Mr. Burns is the perfect guy to run [a for-profit university],” said Jean, who adds that the idea was mostly in motion before President Donald Trump was called on to defend his own for-profit university.

Asked if the president might tweet about the episode, Jean seemed to think it unlikely, but said he’d be “honored” if it happened.

The Simpsons crew will note a special anniversary on April 16, marking 30 years since The Simpsons shorts first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show.

As season 28 winds down, Jean said The Simpsons is going strong. “I know we’ll go through 30 seasons, but I wouldn’t say that’s the end,” he said. “As long as the cast is willing and the economics work, it’ll go on.”
— Michael Malone

This article was updated on April 3 to correct the time that The Manns airs on TV One. It airs at 8 p.m., not 10 p.m.

Bounce TV today has launched an over the top streaming service featuring the popular African-American-themed movies from the 1970s and 1980s.

The service, dubbed Brown Sugar, will feature an unedited and commercial free library of 1970s films often referred to as “Blaxploitation” movies like Black Caesar, Shaft, Super Fly, Uptown Saturday Night and CleopatraJones, said company officials. The service will cost $3.99 per month with a free initial trial period for subscribers.

Veteran actors Fred Williamson and Pam Grier have been named officials ambassadors for Brown Sugar, which was initially the official name of a Saturday night movie programming block on Bounce.

Grier in a statement said that the service is “just like Netflix, only blacker.”

Subscribers can download Brown Sugar to mobile phones and tablets in the Google Play Store and iTunes App Store, or access the service via the www.BrownSugar.com site, said company officials.

Extensive coverage of Muhammad Ali's funeral services and memorial today (June 10) in his hometown of Louisville, Ky., is planned on ESPN, TV One and Bounce TV, the networks have said.

With at least nine-and-a-half hours of live presence and coverage of Friday’s day of remembrance for Muhammad Ali, SportsCenter on ESPN (streaming live on WatchESPN) will serve viewers wanting to see the planned 19-mile procession and the ensuing memorial service. The former Olympic gold medalist, three-time heavyweight boxing world champion and cultural icon died one week ago at age 74 and programmers have poured out remembrances. 

Beginning with SportsCenter:AM at 7 a.m. ET and continuing through the service’s completion, viewers will get comprehensive access to the day’s events, anchored in Louisville by Hannah Storm and Jeremy Schaap outside the KFC Yum! Center, where the memorial service will be held.

TV One is pre-empting its regularly scheduled programming to broadcast live the memorial service. Beginning at 2 p.m. ET, Roland S. Martin, host of TV One's News One Now, will report from the show's Washington, D.C., studios. In addition, TV One will continue to celebrate the life of "The Greatest of All Time" with a special encore presentation of the one-hour documentary Muhammad Ali: Fighting Spirit,  airing at 7 p.m. ET. Martin and guest panelists will also share commentary during the entire public service at the KFC Yum! Center.

Bounce TV said its coverage will start at 9 a.m. with the funeral procession through the streets of Louisville and will carry through his memorial service, aired live, uninterrupted and commercial-free. The memorial service, scheduled for 2 p.m. ET, is to include eulogies by Bill Clinton, Bryant Gumbel and Billy Crystal. Between the procession and the service, Bounce TV will present 1977 biopic The Greatest (starring Ali as himself) along with several special tributes throughout the telecast of Premier Boxing Champions on Sunday night, June 12, starting at 9 p.m. ET. Bounce TV's coverage is in partnership with its Louisville affiliate, Raycom Media-owned WAVE-TV.

BET and Centric will air the memorial sesrvice commercial free as part of its news special, BET Remembers Muhammad Ali: The Memorial Service beginning at 2 p.m. BET Networks will also broadcast and encore airing of BET News' The Truth Series documentary Muhammad Ali: The People's Champ at 1 p.m. 

Several cable networks have put their ratings faith into scripted dramas and comedies that have church- and religion-based themes as a backdrop.

Shows ranging from dramas like OWN’s upcoming Greenleaf, starring Oprah Winfrey; Bounce TV’s first original series, Saints & Sinners; and AMC’s DC Comics-driven Preacher to comedies like TV Land’s The Soul Man and Impastor feature religious overtones that networks say help bless the show’s main storyline and characters — who often than come across more as sinners than saints.

“The shows provide a fresh perspective of the world that we know,” Ri-Karlo Handy, senior vice president of original programming for multicast network Bounce TV, said about the new church-themed drama series Saints & Sinners. “We’re not being overly religious, but instead are showing real, flawed characters that often make mistakes even in the midst of the church.”

TRACK RECORD OF RATINGS WINS

Church- and religious-themed original movies and limited series have generated strong numbers in recent years. History’s five-episode series The Bible averaged more than 13 million viewers in 2013, while National Geographic Channel’s original movie Killing Jesus set a ratings record last March with 3.7 million viewers. (Nat Geo will target the faith-based audience in a different way on April 3 with the new docuseries The Story of God With Morgan Freeman.)

Until recently, though, there have been very few scripted drama or comedy series on television that have featured the church or religion as a main component of a show’s storyline. Unlike reality or Bible-based documentary shows, which tend to have a more preachy focus, scripted dramas and comedies focus less on theology and more on the human and often-flawed characters within the church, executives said.

For African-American targeted network Bounce TV, Saints & Sinners, which stars Vanessa Bell Calloway (Coming to America) and Gloria Ruben (ER) and follows the conflicts among members of a small-town Georgia Baptist church, drew a network-record 1.5 million cumulative viewers for the episode that bowed March 13.

“Our audience is one that really likes the drama and the characters, and this is a great new backdrop that they haven’t seen,” Handy said.

“Not every character in our show is a devout Christian, but they have some sort of connection to the church, whether good, bad or indifferent.”

OWN also hopes to draw religious and non-religious viewers to Greenleaf, which debuts in June. The show, the first scripted series in which network CEO Oprah Winfrey will have a recurring acting role, follows a powerful and influential family and their Memphis, Tenn., megachurch.

Greenleaf gives the network a way to reach its core viewers with drama, as it did with the Tyler Perry-created series The Haves and the Have Nots, but this time with a show that probes religious themes, OWN president Erik Logan said.

“We find this arena to be compelling and interesting … there hasn’t been a lot of exploration to date in it, and I think it’s an area where we see opportunity to put real characters and real situations on screen for storytelling purposes,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s about all the challenges that a large family has, but the background that the church provides is a very interesting and compelling stage for us to have this story and have these very rich and diverse characters talk from.”

‘SOMETHING LARGER AT PLAY’

TV Land has approached religion afrom a comedy standpoint with freshman series Impastor, about a gambling addict who ends up stealing the identity of a gay pastor, and The Soul Man, which stars Cedric the Entertainer as a superstar singer who returns to lead his father’s church.

The Soul Man, which launches its fifth and final season March 30, is TV Land’s most watched show among African-Americans.

The religious themes add a new wrinkle to the show’s overall characters and storylines, TV Land executive vice president of development and original programming Keith Cox said.

“While the church is a background element in every episode, it’s really just a touchstone for the idea that there’s always something larger at play,” Cox said.