A federal appeals court has rejected an Indianapolis broadcaster’s claims that DirecTV and Dish Network racially discriminated against his company by declining to pay retransmission fees to carry its stations. 

Circle City Broadcasting and its majority owner, DuJuan McCoy, had asked the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a U.S. District Court’s decision last year to throw out the cases without a trial. (The news was reported by Indiana Lawyer.)

Circle City had sued the satellite TV companies back in 2020 because they refused to pay retrans fees after Circle City bought Indianapolis TV stations WISH and WNDY from Nexstar Media Group. McCoy charged Dish and DirecTV were discriminating against the stations because they were now part of a Black-owned business. 

“For their part, Dish and DirecTV presented clear evidence of a race-neutral reason for their contractual negotiating decisions — Circle City’s lack of bargaining power,” the 7th Circuit ruled.

According to court documents, when asked by McCoy why he was offered lower rates than competitors, a representative for Dish responded that “extremely large groups, like Nexstar, are able to extract money for stations that [multichannel distributors] would not pay for otherwise, simply by withholding consent for the stations [multichannel distributors] really do want,” a practice Dish calls an “industry norm.”

Multicultural News Network (MNN) has secured a multi-year nationwide linear distribution agreement with Charter Communications to make MNN available to its Spectrum customers when the network launches. 

DuJuan A. McCoy, founder and chairman of Multicultural News Network, is aiming for a fourth quarter launch. 

“Charter has been an unconditional supporter of me and my companies since my first interactions with my broadcast TV station group in 2015,” said McCoy. “It is to no surprise that Charter is the first major multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) to agree to launch MNN this year. They were also the first MVPD to offer to launch MNN in 2018 when they were first introduced to the network. Working with their programming distribution department and multicultural team has been refreshing.”

Cox Media Group is a partner on MNN, which describes itself as “a 24-hour, non-partisan national news network that will bring an unbiased forum for the voices of America’s underserved multicultural communities.” It will target Blacks, Hispanics, LGBT, Asians, Native Americans and people of Middle Eastern descent, among others.

“Charter is dedicated to offering our customers the best programming that showcases diverse voices and perspectives,” said Tom Montemagno, executive VP of programming acquisition for Charter. “We look forward to adding Multicultural News Network to our lineup and giving Spectrum customers access to its topical news and issues-oriented multicultural programming.”

MNN will be headquartered in Indianapolis, in the facility that houses Circle City Broadcasting’s WISH and MyINDY-TV 23.

“As one of the few Black-owned media companies in the United States, I can confirm that Charter is a true advocate for diversity in media and, in my opinion, has been one of the industry leaders and on the forefront of DE&I. I am hopeful that others will take note of Charter’s success in this area and join this necessary movement,” said McCoy.

DuJuan McCoy, CEO and owner of Circle City Broadcasting, has teamed up with the Cox Media Group TV stations to launch the Multicultural News Network (MNN), a planned national network aiming to be “an unbiased national forum for the voices of America’s underserved multicultural communities.”

McCoy, targeting a launch in the second half of next year, declined to tip his hand on distribution partners until they are “firmed up,” he said, including whether cable operator Cox Communications would back the Cox Media effort. But he did say Cox Media is investing cash, as well as news bureaus and content, into the network.

He also said the proposal is already in front of “every MVPD in America” and that he has had offers. McCoy said he is seeking channel positions near those of the major news networks.

MNN already has competition for diverse eyeballs. Black News Channel launched last February and in July secured expanded carriage on Charter Communications cable systems. But while that channel is targeted to African-American communities, MNN is casting a wider net, including  “Blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ communities, Asians, Native Americans, people of Middle Eastern descent” and others.

‘Adding to the Party’

“The more diverse news sources in the game the better for the entire cause of giving people who typically don’t have a voice on a platform a voice,” McCoy said of entering the market after BNC. “I wouldn’t say ‘taking them on,’ I would say ‘adding to the party.’”

Plus, he said, the goal of what is essentially a broadly targeted yet niche network is to take on the likes of CNN and Fox News Channel, though with no left or right tilts. 

The plan is for the network to air separate newscasts for different groups, McCoy said. “When we [produce]
news for LGBTQ,” for example, “they will know that this news is for me, about me, produced by me, and from my perspective, that’s why I want to listen.”

McCoy said the plans are for an LGBTQ news hour, a Middle Eastern hour, a Black hour, a women’s hour, an Hispanic hour. He said there will also be programming for a mix of cultures, but that each group will get an hour to have their stories told.

Bureaus will be set up in all of the major metro areas where either Cox Media or Circle City has stations, McCoy said. Each of those stations’ news departments will have a content-sharing partnership with MNN.

Cox has 33 TV stations in 20 markets, including Atlanta, Boston and Memphis, as well as a Cox Washington bureau McCoy said will be available to the network. Circle City has The CW affiliate WISH and MyNetworkTV affiliate WNDY, both in Indianapolis. McCoy said WISH currently produces more than 80 hours of local news a week, and points out he expanded news on his stations when he owned Bayou City Broadcasting and diversified those newsrooms to give a different perspective on the news, something he wants to do nationally with MNN.

Dom Caristi, a telecommunications professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, volunteered that creating MNN from already existing facilities in Indianapolis was brilliant.“By using a lot of infrastructure that already exists (like TV stations across the country), MNN should be able to hit the ground running sooner than a startup that would have to start from scratch,” he said in a statement. 

 “While I don’t know the specifics of the business, there should be multiple opportunities,” Caristi told Multichannel News. “Just like CNN did when it was starting out, MNN will be able to function simultaneously as a standalone network and as a content provider for partner stations across the country. The prospects are bright.”

The launch comes amidst a national reckoning about the country’s historic treatment of Blacks and other minorities and how that inequality needs to be addressed, but McCoy said the network has been in the works for a couple of years. He said he was already getting traction on distribution when he had to turn his focus to negotiating deals, first to divest his Bayou TV stations to Byron Allen in 2019 then to buy WISH from Nexstar Media Group.

Home Base in Indy

The network will be based in Indianapolis, co-located with WISH. McCoy will be chairman and CEO of the network. He said he will be the hands-on network head and hopes to do for his hometown of Indianapolis what CNN did for Atlanta.

McCoy suggested his goal is no less than being the first person of color who both understood and had experience in the news business and the ability to launch and run a news network, and to have the power of a Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch to launch such a network. “Hopefully I can become the first person to do that,” he said.  

DuJuan McCoy, CEO and owner of Circle City Broadcasting, has teamed up with Cox Media to launch the Multicultural News Network (MNN).

The network, which is scheduled to launch second quarter 2021 is billed as "an unbiased national forum for the voices of America’s underserved multicultural communities."

McCoy said it will be a national cable network "just like CNN and Fox News."

The launch comes amidst a national reckoning about the country's historic treatment of Blacks and other minorities and how that inequality needs to be addressed.

MNN will include live daily news serving diverse communities, which includes "Blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ communities, Asians, Native Americans, people of Middle Eastern descent, and others.

The network will be based in Indianapolis, co-located with Circle City's WISH-TV. McCoy will be chairman and CEO of the network and anticipates opening bureaus around the country.

“We believe MNN will change the way Americans view news while providing a national platform for many underserved, diverse communities that are voiceless in America’s current national news media landscape."

"CMG strongly supports increasing diversity in media and providing authentic, unbiased platforms for underserved voices to be heard," said CMG chairman Steve Pruett.

African American-owned television station owner Circle City Broadcasting and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters have taken Dish Network to court, filing a suit in U.S. District Court in Indiana claiming discrimination by the satellite TV distributor, who they claim has refused to properly negotiate retransmission consent deals with minority-owned broadcasters.

The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in Indianapolis, claims that Dish has refused to carry stations owned by Circle City Broadcasting (CW affiliate WISH-TV and MyNetworkTV affiliate WNDY-TV in Indianapolis), despite having carried the properties when they were owned by white companies.

“We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against these baseless claims,” Dish said in a statement.

Circle City purchased the stations from Nexstar Broadcast Group in April 2019 for $42.5 million. The sale was part of several such deals Nexstar made to divest stations to gain regulatory approval for its purchase of Tribune Media.

According to the suit, Dish had paid retransmission consent fees to Nexstar for its stations, including WISH-TV and WNDY-TV, in the past, but once the properties were sold, the satellite giant’s attitude changed.

Circle City claims that Dish’s refusal to pay retrans fees for its stations reflects an industry-wide discriminatory policy against minority-owned stations, “paying the non-minority broadcasters significant fees to rebroadcast their stations and channels while offering practically no fees to the historically disadvantaged broadcaster or programmer for the exact same or superior programming.” And it claimed, “there are extreme instances where Dish is not offering to carry minority channels at all,” using African-American owned cable, radio, syndication, web and marketing company Urban One as an example.

Included in the exhibits to the suit is a letter from Urban One chairman and CEO Alfred Liggins III to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to consider Dish’s “questionable track record in the area of diversity,” when it evaluated the satellite company’s role in the T-Mobile-Sprint merger. As part of that deal, Dish agreed to purchase about 9.3 million Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile prepaid wireless accounts, many of which are owned by minority customers.

“Urban One urges the Commission to ensure that their interests will not be harmed by the acquisition by Dish,” Liggins III wrote.

Circle City claims that shortly after it closed on its purchase of stations from Nexstar, Dish offered retrans rates that were a “tiny fraction” and “pennies on the dollar” of what the stations had been receiving in the past. Dish, Circle City claims, refused to negotiate with the station owner, “effectively hobbling Circle City’s ability to serve its market.”

Circle City owner and CEO DuJuan McCoy said in the suit that the stations offered to operate under the same retrans deal as the previous owner, but that Dish also refused.

“Dish has now publicly accused me of demanding unprecedented rates for the stations,” McCoy wrote in a letter to the FCC included in the suit.

He added that Circle City had managed to secure new retrans agreements with major distributors in their coverage area, including Comcast and Charter. But it has had worse luck with satellite operators -- DirecTV has been without the stations since Jan. 31  and Dish has not carried the stations since Oct. 4. 

Circle City is suing for retransmission fees at a fair market rate, actual and punitive damages, interest, reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, according to the suit.