Portia, a half-hour lifestyle program, has been picked up for a third season by streaming network Fox Soul, where it airs back-to-back weekdays at 7 p.m. ET. The show, which is hosted by Portia Bruner, also airs on select Fox-owned television stations in Atlanta, San Francisco and Orlando, Florida, as well as on the Impact Network, a faith-based network that serves urban audiences. 

“Portia has developed a strong base of viewers across the country and we love having her as a part of the daily lineup,” said Stephen Brown, executive VP of programming and development for Fox Television Stations and Fox First Run, in a statement.  

Five days a week, Portia covers such topics as faith, family issues, health, fitness and social issues that impact communities nationwide. Each episode focuses on a single subject with expertise supplied by key guests. Kathy Sapp, who previously oversaw Judge Alex and Judge Faith, executive produces while Fox First Run distributes. Portia is available to other stations across the country. 

“What a blessing this is — for all of us! The renewal is a huge win for the Black women, men and children whose stories inspire viewers from all walks of life,” said Bruner, also in a statement. “Candid and thoughtful conversations about our faith, our mental health, our achievements and even how we triumph over tragedy provide the daily dose of positivity our viewers expect from this show. I'm grateful for the opportunity to keep sharing stories that inform, empower and entertain the community in such a meaningful way.”

In its second season, Portia became the second most-popular series on Fox Soul, with more than 600,000 unique viewers each month, up 68% compared to the same time period last year, according to Fox. Portia also has more than 500,000 streams on its YouTube channel.

Bruner joined Fox-owned WAGA Atlanta in 2003 and began hosting Portia on Fox Soul in 2002. Prior to hosting Portia, she anchored WAGA’s Fox 5 News at Noon and reported for the station’s nightly newscasts. Before coming to WAGA, Bruner was the consumer reporter at WTKR Norfolk, Virginia, and an anchor and reporter at WAPT Jackson, Mississippi. Bruner began her career in broadcasting as a researcher and producer in the consumer news unit at NBC’s WRC Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of Howard University. 

D’Artagnan Bebel, senior VP and general manager of KRIV-KTXH Houston, has been named general manager and head of programming at Fox Soul. He succeeds James DuBose at Fox Soul, and continues running the Fox-owned TV stations. 

Fox Soul is a live streaming channel dedicated to Black culture.   

“I am excited about the opportunity to help grow Fox Soul into a brand that is reflective of the diversity within, and that the African-American community can be proud of,” said Bebel. “The Black community is far from being homogeneous, and Fox Soul will hope to serve as a vehicle for the greater good by recognizing those who may go unrecognized. We will constantly be refining and developing this network to make it something the community loves.”

Fox Soul will expand humorous weekly news program TEA-G-I-F to five nights a week. Claudia Jordan, Funky Dineva and Al Reynolds host. The channel is also developing a block of spiritual and religious programming on Sundays.

“It has been one of the greatest highlights of my professional and personal life to have been able to lead such a talented group of people at Fox Soul,” said DuBose. “I have nothing but sincere gratitude towards the entire team, especially Jack Abernethy [Fox Television Stations CEO] and Stephen Brown [executive VP, programming and development, Fox Television Stations]. This experience has prepared me for my next chapter, which I am extremely excited about. I am forever grateful to the Fox family.”

Bebel has run Fox’s Houston duopoly for 23 years.

President Joe Biden did not sit for a pre-Super Bowl LVII interview after all despite a day of conflicting statements from the White House and Fox surrounding the potential conversation, according to published reports.

The White House Friday night said a hoped-for interview with Fox Corp.-owned streaming service Fox Soul had not been canceled and then rescheduled, despite comments from Fox earlier in the day, The New York Times reported.

White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted on Friday that Fox had canceled a conversation between President Biden and Fox Soul personalities that would “discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans.“ Later on Friday, Fox released a statement that, after some initial confusion, it would sanction a Fox Soul interview of Biden (as opposed to a Fox News Channel sit-down) before the big game on Sunday. The interview was reported to include Mike Hill and Vivica A. Fox for Fox Soul.

Late Friday night the White House released a statement calling “inaccurate” comments from Fox Corp. indicating that the interview was “rescheduled,” according to The Times.

The statement appeared to end efforts to continue the tradition of an Oval Office pre-Super Bowl interview. Fox News on-air talent had interviewed the president during recent Super Bowls aired on Fox. Bill O’Reilly spoke to President Obama in 2011 and 2014 and to President Trump in 2017. Sean Hannity also spoke to President Trump in 2020. ■ 

Eric Strong has been named senior VP of strategic initiatives at Fox Soul. He has been senior VP of media platforms and strategic partnerships at e-commerce platform Knocking. 

“The very talented teams in programming and distribution have created a Fox Soul product that is worth crowing about,” said Stephen Brown, executive VP of programming and development, Fox Television Stations and Fox First Run. “Eric's job now is to promote this amazing streaming channel to the advertising community.”

Prior to Knocking, Strong was a consultant for AccuWeather Network. Previously, Strong was senior account executive of advertiser sales for the Tennis Channel. He also worked at Rentrak, and began his media career as VP of sales at Warner Brothers/Lorimar Television/Lorimar-Telepictures.

Also: Fox Soul‘s James DuBose Eyes Profit After Expanding Viewership

“I couldn't have asked for a better environment,” he said. “Fox Soul is a business opportunity because it provides uplifting, fun and informative content to a multicultural audience backed by insights gained over a decades-long relationship with African-American viewers. It's our perspective and our truth, as viewed through the lens of our shared experiences.”

An ad-supported streaming network, Fox Soul launched early in 2020. ■

Fox Corp. highlighted its inclusion and diversity efforts during a recent panel discussion in which talent from its news, sports and entertainment divisions cited the need for an inclusive and authentic approach to diversity issues.

Moderated by Harris Faulkner, host of Fox News Channel's The Faulkner Focus, the March 23 panel -- part of Fox Corp.’s Content Drives Commerce Brand Partnership Summit -- discussed the importance of authenticity in addressing on- and off-screen inclusion issues.

“Authenticity is the most important word when you’re talking about diversity,” Fox Sports on-air personality Joy Taylor said. “You can very much placate to diversity and check a box and create a scenario where you’re welcoming people, but if it’s not authentic, the people you are trying to include … are very quickly going to walk into the room and realize this isn’t really it.”

Miranda Kwok, creator and executive producer of drama series The Cleaning Lady, said she had concerns that distributors wouldn’t allow her to tell the story of an undocumented immigrant trying to provide for her family, but she found a willing outlet in Fox.

“I thought I was going to pitch it to cable and streaming where I thought these stories would land, but [series producer] Warner Bros. said there is a greater appetite right now for more diverse stories and different perspectives on broadcast television,” she said. “They [Fox] totally embraced the fact that it was a story about a southeast Asian woman who is an undocumented immigrant. So it’s been a very, very exciting time to have all of that support to tell a story [of someone who is] normally marginalized, pushed into the shadows and told they don’t matter."

The panel also said that the industry needs to continue to push for more diversity and inclusion in front of the camera and in the producer’s chair. “The more voices and background through diversity moving forward doesn’t just help us win, but it drives home the point that we count, especially when it's hard,” Faulkner said. “We bring something to the table that not everyone does, so let’s pull up some more chairs and create a bigger table. The power of the voice matters, and it can’t all be the same because then people begin to tune us out.”

Tammi Mac, host of talk show Business of Being Black with Tammi Mac on streaming service Fox Soul, also said that diversity needs to be the norm rather than the trend within the industry. “A lot of times when we experience a television show that’s diverse, we think of it as a trend … but that does a disservice to diversity and inclusion because that means that it's in and then it’s out,” she said. “You want to think about diversity for the long haul. This is how you will continuously include people of every race, age, gender to be a part of your program, and to tell those stories in an authentic way so that those people who are those people will be tied in.”

Also: Fox Soul's James DuBose Eyes Profit After Expanding Viewership

Joel Kuwahara, co-founder of animation production studio Bento Box -- which Fox acquired in 2019 -- added the industry has to find ways to give more opportunities to people and voices who aren’t being heard. “I personally would like to be able to help these young artists, some of these diverse voices to help make something they may not know how to make in the animated space,” he said. “It can get very complicated to do the kind of work we do, but they need an opportunity.” ■

After growing its audience in 2021, Fox Soul has ambitious plans to expand its programming and generate revenue.

The two-year-old, ad-supported streaming service operates under the wing of the Fox Television Stations group. Fox Soul said its viewership climbed 131% to 61 million viewers and minutes viewed jumped 191% to 700 million in 2021. 

“We’re still here, so we must be doing something right,” Fox Soul general manager and head of programming James DuBose said.

Fox Soul is in the process of bringing in a chief revenue officer. “My goal is to make sure we become a profitable business,” DuBose said. While not profitable yet, he said “we’re headed in the right direction.”

DuBose said Fox Soul plans to add its first music competition show in the spring. It will be looking to find a group — rather than an individual performer — and show viewers how writers, producers and artists work together to come up with hits, said DuBose, who played football at Wake Forest and once ran Sean (Diddy) Combs’s TV-production company.

DuBose also has a travel series in the works to show viewers the world that lies beyond their community, as well as an animated show for kids on Saturday morning.

It recently ordered six episodes of Turnt Out with TS Madison, featuring the first Black trans woman to star in and executive-produce her own reality series, and picked up 13 more episodes of The House, a talk show focused on the Black LGBTQIA+ experience.

Fox Soul is also relaunching its programming partnership with Black Enterprise.

Entertaining, Inspiring Shows

As the head of programming, DuBose said his goal is not just to entertain viewers, but to educate and inspire as well. 

“We want to tell the stories behind the stories and really give people an opportunity to talk about things that they normally only discuss in the privacy of their own homes,” DuBose said. The formula seems to work. Fox Soul’s audience is 85% to 90% Black.

“We’re unapologetically Black, but consumable by all,” DuBose said. “We want our stories, and our voice, to be heard, but we want to be respected and well-received by everybody across the board.” 

Fox Soul also aims to be interactive with its viewers. but that got sidetracked during the pandemic. “I would anticipate by summertime we will be back to having that technology and that ability. That's very important to our success,” DuBose said.

To some, Fox is an odd place for a network for Black people, given the shadow cast by Fox News Channel.

“There’s no hiding from the fact that the Black community sees it in one way,” DuBose said. “A lot of the community, friends and so forth, were a little skeptical, as was expected.” He said he didn’t want to be the Black face of a network where the people behind the scenes were not interested in the community. 

“They had no interest in doing that either, and they’ve been very, very true to that word,” he said.

With cord-cutting and more viewers streaming, Fox Television Stations wanted to get into streaming, and did research to see what audiences it could attract. Stephen Brown, executive VP, programming and development for the station group, noted that a Fox First-Run show like Divorce Court already generates more revenue from streaming than it does from broadcast. 

With shows like Living Single, Martin and Empire, “Fox traditionally has served the African-American population, in the network and in our daily syndicated programming, Divorce Court, Dish Nation and Wendy Williams,” Brown said.

Fox owns TV stations in eight of the top 10 Black markets. “This is the population that we should serve because we already serve them,” Brown said. “Why not hyper-serve them?”

DuBose was producing Dish Nation for Fox. “We brought James in and said, ‘We want to create a channel for the African-American audience, but we don’t want to do the traditional thing. We needed to create an authentic experience.’ And James and his team came up with Our Voice. Our Truth,” Brown said.

DuBose said he wanted to be in entertainment from childhood, shooting music videos as a teenager. He went to Wake Forest University to play football because it has a great communications department.

He now says he’s “inspired by people who have experienced great failure and come out of that.” He has his own story to tell. 

DuBose started his own business in 2005 and was creating reality shows for BET and other networks. Some of his hits were Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is, Tiny and Toya and The Michael Vick Project.

“I had great success until about 2013-14,” he said. “It was like I couldn't miss. Everything I was touching was working. I was the guy who everyone was coming to. But I was miserable at my highest, financially, career-wise and everything. Inside I was dying.” He suffered a deep depression.  

He said then-BET Networks president of original programming Loretha Jones called him into her office. She said, “I'm going to pay for you to get help because I'm not there for your funeral,” DuBose recalled.

“I damn near lost everything,” DuBose said. “It took me a long, long time to come back from that. I lost a lot, but by the grace of God, I was able to get myself together and continue.”

Ri-Karlo Handy, CEO of Sunwise Media and founder of the Handy Foundation, which is dedicated to providing job placement into hard-to-access Hollywood jobs, said DuBose gave him his first opportunity as an executive producer, and that many of the top Black reality show producers worked for DuBose at some point in their career.

“If Fox Soul gives James a chance to reinvent himself while giving Black folks an opportunity in this business, I hope he’s successful,” Handy said.

The community is watching to see what comes out of Fox Soul, Handy said. “I think that supporting content that employs people of color is important, so we wish him all the best,” he said.

Brown said he and Jack Abernethy, CEO of Fox Television Stations, “step way back” when it comes to Fox Soul’s programming. That’s one reason it rings true, he said. Fox Soul also manages to produce programming on a budget, or by working with partners.

“We produce the way Fox First Run produces our syndicated programs,” Brown said. “We're incredibly cost-conscious. We don't spend stupid amounts of money on on things that really ultimately don't matter. We pay good salaries for our staff and for our infrastructure. But we don't pay inordinate salaries to stars that ultimately are kind of flashes and then and then people will go away.”

Fox Soul’s lineup includes Fox First Run shows including Divorce Court and Dish Nation. It also runs shows produced by individual Fox stations, such as The Isiah Factor Uncensored from KRIV Houston and The Feed at Night from WTXF Philadelphia.

Over the Christmas break, Fox Soul aired the Fox broadcast network series Our Kind of People. 

In Sync with Fox Stations

It’s a symbiotic relationship between the Fox operations. “We incubate programming on Fox Soul that can be widely distributed across our owned and operated stations,” Brown said. Fox Soul programs Business of Being Black With Tammi Mac, The Book of Seann, The Black Report and Cocktails With Queens are broadcast by Fox stations.

The arrangement provides fresh programming for the stations and promotion for Fox Soul, Brown said.

Fox Television Stations is providing additional distribution for Fox Soul. Fox’s station in Atlanta, WAGA (Fox 5), also streams Fox Soul on its website.

Fox Soul also offered an original holiday movie with Where Hearts Lie. Watch time for Fox Soul on Vizio rose 107% when it premiered on December 18.

“The next step after distribution and getting our work out there is to monetize it,” Brown said. “We’re hiring a chief revenue officer to really push that forward.” The new CRO will report to Abernethy.

Fox Soul is getting more aggressive in getting advertisers. It recently did an integration deal for Nissan that involved a series of vignettes for Black History Month.

Brown doesn’t expect Fox Soul to turn a profit this year, but he sees it breaking even next year and making money after that. 

“We’re not in the business to have a hobby,” Brown said. “We’re in the business to be a business.”

That means DuBose is learning to be an executive as well as a producer. “I’m learning every day about things that I never thought I would do,” he said. “I would like to consider myself an executive/producer, but mostly a person who is still learning and enjoying what he’s doing.” ■

 As free streaming service Fox Soul closes in on its second anniversary in February, its strategy of providing an unapologetic platform for African-American voices has yielded major partnerships both on the distribution and programming side.

Fox Soul recently inked a carriage agreement with YouTube TV, extending its distribution footprint to more than 44 million viewers through deals that also include Samsung TV, Roku and Tubi. On the programming front, recent partnerships with faith-based content provider Stellar TV, iconic publisher Black Enterprise and prolific music entrepreneur Damon Dash’s Damon Dash Studios will continue to help build up a steady flow of original content that already includes such shows as nightly news/talk series Fox Soul’s Black Report, weekly talk show Cocktails with Queens and music/talk series The Mix. 

Fox Soul general manager & head of programming James DuBose recently talked to Multichannel News' R. Thomas Umstead about the challenges and opportunities the service has experienced during its nearly two-year run, which also coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and racial protests over excessive police violence during the summer of 2020. An edited version of the interview appears below.      

MCN: With nearly two years under its belt, has Fox Soul’s evolution met or surpassed your expectations? 

James DuBose: I'm very happy. I feel like we are definitely still on the right path of what we set out to do in terms of growth. As a startup, and especially a startup network whose work is focused on a specific audience, I thought it may have been a little more difficult for the industry to get an opportunity to understand who we are and what our real purpose and mission was. But the pandemic actually allowed us to broaden our footprint a lot faster than I anticipated. We couldn’t be in the studio because of COVID, so we were able to have guests from around the world be a part of Fox Soul [via digital], which was a real blessing for us. Word of mouth for our brand has really taken off, and we’ve really learned how to produce our shows with the technology we had during COVID. We’ve really seen an uptick in terms of our viewership in terms of minutes watched as well as in the distribution partnership that we currently have, so I’m extremely happy where we are. I couldn’t have asked for more under the circumstances -- but we still have a long way to go.

MCN: Have you seen much change in the amount of African-American targeted content on screen, particularly after racial reckoning that we went through in 2020?

JD: I think quite honestly, it's the same from this perspective: you may be able to find more specific black content at various outlets, but the difference is there aren’t many outlets that can offer content that’s as raw and unapologetic as us. We don’t have to tell the same story or say things in the same way that they say in other places -- we can speak our emotions without fear of reprimand. In that regard it hasn’t changed much. We as a culture have a voice; we as a culture have a perspective and a truth that needs to be heard. Once it’s heard in its rawest and purest form, I think all cultures will come to respect that. I think our talent really loves the fact that they can speak the way they want to speak and they can react the way they need to react to certain things going around the world. I don’t see that on a lot of other platforms because they just can’t do it in the same way.

MCN: What is the 2022 programming strategy for Fox Soul as it operates in a competitive video streaming marketplace?

JD: One of the missions that we set when we started was to create a safe place where people could talk about things that we normally only discuss in the privacy of our own homes. We wanted to give that voice to our consumers so that they feel that they’re part of this network and it reflects their voice and their truth. I want to get back to that, which will continue to differentiate ourselves from the other outlets that do Black content. I want to get into more of the music genre, create scripted shows, documentaries and movies that continue to tell the story behind the story.

MCN: Having said that, what should audiences expect to see from Fox Soul onscreen?

JD: We have some great shows coming up, but I’m most excited about the strategic partnerships we’ve been able to create with the likes of Stella TV, Black Enterprise, Dame Dash and more that are coming. I’m so proud that Fox Soul’s audience can be their audience and their audience can be Fox Soul’s audience, but we’re all still speaking the way we want to speak to that audience. We also have our first big music competition show that’s coming out in the new year, and we’ll also get into the wealth and finance, and fashion space. We are going to have our first scripted series coming up after the new year as well. I eventually want to hit every genre we love as a culture, but we’re going to tell it in the Fox Soul way and not try to compete with things that people do really well on their end. 

Multicultural Perspectives is a monthly feature on Nexttv.com exploring issues and personalities in the multicultural TV space. ■ 

Entertainment podcast and syndicated radio show Hollywood Unlocked with Jason Lee [UNCENSORED] is now a TV series coming to digital TV network, Fox Soul, starting Friday, Oct. 30, and continuing on Fridays at 7 p.m. PT/10 p.m. ET, the network said Monday. 

“I'm excited to join the Fox Soul digital television network and bring our show to TV.  This is all coming at a perfect time for us. We started as a podcast, expanded to a successful nationally syndicated radio show with iHeart Radio, and now to have the opportunity to expand to a network that believes in us is amazing,” said Lee, the show’s executive producer and host, in a statement. Lee is simultaneously launching production company Sutter Street Productions. 

“It’s a very exciting time for Hollywood Unlocked and my brand. I, along with DJ Damage and my newest co-host Blue Telusma, will deliver can’t-miss content for Fox Soul subscribers, and as our loyalists know, the show is always full of surprises, celebrity guests and we definitely spill lots of tea!” 

Related: Fox Aims to Put Some Soul Into OTT

"I've always hoped Jason and I would have the chance to work together, and the opportunity is finally right," said James DuBose, head of programming and executive producer, Fox Soul, also in a statement. "The way he has ingrained himself into the world of pop culture makes his Hollywood Unlocked show a perfect addition to our current lineup of Fox Soul programming." 

The star of Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood and MTV’s Wild ‘N Out gained recognition for his then podcast and blog when he was the first to break the news that Kylie Jenner’s partner Tristan Thompson was cheating with her best friend, Jordyn Woods. Since then, Hollywood Unlocked has gone on to break more news as well as score exclusive interviews with celebrities such as Cardi B and Floyd Mayweather.

Lee debuted Hollywood Unlocked in 2015. The Fox Television Stations launched Fox Soul in January 2020 as an over-the-top digital network targeting Black Americans.

Lee is executive producer and host of Hollywood Unlocked while DuBose also serves as executive producer. Tarvenia Jones serves as co-executive producer for Fox Soul. 

In the aftermath of the June protests over the May 25 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, African-American targeted networks and streaming services are vowing to continue to keep issues important to the Black community at the forefront of new programming as the news cycle shifts to other breaking stories.

Executives at services such as Fox Soul, BET, TV One and Black News Channel said they provide a platform for target audiences to voice their concerns and demands regarding police brutality, systematic racism and other issues even as other events dominate news coverage in the future.

“We are in a unique position,” Black News Channel VP of news and programming Gary Wordlaw said. “I think people will turn to our network and others to compare the type of coverage we’re doing versus what they’re seeing on CNN, Fox News or MSNBC, and see that we’re giving stories important to our audience longer, in-depth treatment.”

Along with full coverage of regularly-scheduled shows, Black News Channel in May launched BNC Now, a live afternoon news show that allows for more discussion of the issues facing Black America, Wordlaw said. The network has also produced town hall specials that focus on specific issues ranging from police reform to the continuing effects of COVID-19 on the African-American community.

Entertainment networks are also heeding the community’s call. Streaming service Fox Soul in May launched The Black Report, a news and public-affairs show that offers a voice to disenfranchised African-Americans and provides its core viewers with much-needed information, according to Fox Soul president James DuBose.

Expanding its reach, Fox Soul two weeks ago launched one- to two-hour programming blocks on several Fox-owned stations, including WWOR New York, KCOP Los Angeles and KDFI Dallas.

“When all the other networks and services go back to normal business, we will continue to provide a voice for the black community because we have the ability to celebrate black culture every day,” DuBose said.

BET has been aggressive in its approach to covering the protests and their aftermath. Along with several June town hall specials, the network’s June 28 BET Awards provided a platform for artists from Beyoncé to Alicia Keys to address the movement against police brutality and racial injustice within the country.

Funding ‘Content for Change’

BET also announced a new social-justice initiative called “Content for Change,” designed to support the creation, distribution, marketing and promotion of programs aimed at eliminating systemic racism and inequality in America. The initiative will receive $25 million in funding from BET and its corporate partners.

“We have to give people an opportunity to have a voice, to express their rage, to express their grief, to engage in community,” BET president Scott Mills said.

Wordlaw said that the issues of police reform and economic inequality that rose up from the Floyd protests will remain very important to the community. Networks targeting the African-American community have a responsibility to serve their audience by providing an avenue for discussion of such issues, he said.

“It’s an awesome responsibility and I’m very happy to be a part of it, but we’re just a small part of it,” he said. “All of us have a responsibility to continue to put forth a story, and not one of us thinks any of us are independent — we have to work together to get the information to our audiences.”  

After most of 21st Century Fox was sold to The Walt Disney Co. in 2019, Fox Television Stations executives realized that if they wanted to be in the over-the-top space, they needed to make something happen. So FTS CEO Jack Abernethy decided to serve one of Fox’s core communities by launching a targeted streaming network.

After hosting several “listening sessions” to discover what people might be seeking content-wise, “it became obvious that the constituency that we already served best, African Americans, was the constituency we needed to keep focusing on,” said Stephen Brown, executive VP of programming and development, Fox Television Stations.

FTS then developed the idea for Fox Soul, which aims to give the African-American audience a place where it can gather as a community to have an authentic conversation.

Fox Soul is a pure OTT play: It’s available online at FoxSoul.TV, as an app on the iOS and Android platforms, as well as on connected TVs such as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and soon Philo and Xumo TV. There are no plans to turn the service into a linear network; Fox Soul’s executives and hosts prefer the unregulated freedom of an OTT offering.

Fox Soul is advertising supported and free to watch.

Driven by Interactivity

The key differentiator for Fox Soul is that it’s live and interactive for four hours a night, five nights a week. It’s already looking to expand that lineup with an additional hour.

“The mission is to have a place where you feel safe to come and talk outside of your own home,” Fox Soul head of programming James DuBose said. “We are speaking from our soul to your soul and vice versa. And because we are live and interactive, we’re able to tackle topics without watering them down.”

Fox Soul’s programming lineup, which officially premiered Jan. 13 after launching in a soft beta test in October, falls under four themes. Starting at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET, Out Loud with Claudia Jordan offers an hour of female empowerment, followed by an hour of inspiration with On the 7 with Dr. Sean, hosted by pastor Dr. Sean McMillan, who takes on topics of faith.

At 8 p.m. PT/11 p.m. ET, Fox Sports’s Mike Hill and record producer Donny Harrell lead conversations that black men might be having in a barbershop on The Mike and Donny Show. And at 9 p.m. PT/12 a.m. ET, Los Angeles radio DJ Tammi Mac introduces the community to up-and-coming talent on The Tammi Mac Late Show, celebrating black culture through music, comedy, performance and the spoken word.

“We’re starting a network where we want to uplift and show black excellence,” Mac said. “To me, black excellence is the people in the community that you don’t necessarily get to see but who are constantly making a difference. It’s people who have successful small businesses or people who are entertainers but you don’t know them because they aren’t Beyoncé. That’s the black excellence that I want to portray.”

Viewers can call in or leave a comment or a question on the app and the hosts can react in real time on the air. All four shows are shot on a single soundstage in Los Angeles, with producers running in to change the sets between shows.

“I love every bit of being live,” Mac said, who hosts a drive-time radio program on KJLH (which stands for kindness, joy, love and happiness) Los Angeles from 3 to 7 p.m. PT each weekday. “You never know what’s going to happen and that means that the show is never, ever the same. It will always be different, always be new and there’s always something to look forward to.”

Beyond the four — and soon to be five — hours of live primetime on Fox Soul, there are also pre-taped shows airing at other times, such as Fox’s syndicated talk program, Dish Nation, which shows radio DJ teams from different markets chatting about the pop-culture news of the day.

Fox Soul also programs locally produced shows such as Street Soldiers with Lisa Evers, a hip-hop focused program that has aired on WNYW New York since 2016; Later with Leon, hosted by Leon Rogers from WFLD Chicago; The Q, hosted by Quincy Harris from WTXF Philadelphia; and Isiah Factor: Uncensored, hosted by Isiah Carey from KRIV Houston.

The Fox Television Stations are debuting new advertiser-supported streaming channel, Fox Soul.

The African-American targeted channel, available via the Fox Soul app or at FoxSoul.TV from 6 to 10 p.m. PT weeknights, will be live and interactive. It will air such programs as On the 7 with Dr. Sean, The Mike and Donny Show, The Tammi Mac Late Show, Out Loud with Claudia Jordan, Fit and Fab with Elise Neal and One on One with Keyshia Cole. The channel also will offer several shows that are produced by and air on Fox stations, including Later with Leon, The Q, Dish Nation, The Isiah Factor: Uncensored and Street Soldiers with Lisa Evers. From 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. PT on weeknights, the channel will air two hours of locally produced Fox programming.

“We are proud to debut this African American focused channel, created by and for the members of the black community. We intend to inform, inspire, and empower our viewers by meeting their needs for authentic conversations on topics relevant to our lives,” James DuBose, Fox Soul’s head of programming, said in a statement.

Viewers that want to interact with the programs or hosts can call into 1-866-FOX-SOUL or via the Fox Soul apps on iPhone, Android, Apple TV, FireTV or at foxsoul.tv. Viewers also can reach out to Fox Soul via YouTube, Facebook or Instagram.