OWN’s original documentary series Black Love on Saturday (August 27) will end its sixth and final season of chronicling the relationships and lives of celebrity and everyday couples. 

Created by married filmmakers Codie and Tommy Oliver, The NAACP Image Awards-nominated series over its run has featured the intimate stories of marriage and love from some of America’s favorite Black couples, including Sterling K. Brown and Ryan Michelle Bathe, Grant Hill and Tamia, and Viola Davis and Julius Tennon.

Codie Oliver recently talked to Multichannel News about the series’ final season as well as the impact Black Love has had on the culture as well as her own relationship. Oliver also talks about future plans for the Black Love franchise in an edited version of the interview that appears below. 

MCN: Is the final season of Black Love a bitter/sweet experience for the two of you?

Codie Oliver: Definitely. For seven years, we have filmed couples, just the two of us and them in the room, with the intention of making it as intimate as possible and for the conversations to be as transparent as possible. It has been logistically challenging as our family has grown and our businesses have grown but we’re excited about ending the series on a high note. It is bitter sweet especially for me because I love meeting incredible couples and sharing their stories through the docuseries, but I look forward to channeling that energy through the rest of our Black Love platforms. 

MCN: What should viewers expect to see in the final season of "Black Love?

CO: We have some new love and parenting journeys that we’re very excited to share, that will create conversation and hopefully expand people’s view of unconditional love. We always do an homage to the couples in season during the finale, but we have some special moments celebrating the legacy couples as well. We aren’t going to lie, there were some tears while editing.

MCN: Do you feel that you've accomplished the goals that you set for the series?

CO: Absolutely. We set out to make sure that our community knows that we are worthy and deserving of love, but it is not without hard work and understanding the meaning of commitment. We have been touched countless times by people sharing the impact that Black Love has had on them, whether they are single, engaged, married, married for decades, our show has been able to open their eyes to their relationship and its possibilities in new ways. 

MCN: What did you as a couple take away from having produced the series? Were there any major revelations and/or disappointments that you experienced in doing the show?

CO: We made a couple of observations having interviewed around 250 couples. One is that the commitment to being committed is what will see you through. It’s not revolutionary, but it is easy to get swallowed up by the ebbs and flows of a relationship when you don’t look at commitment in that way. Another thing is to always consider the 'why.' Your partner isn't perfect. You and they will make mistakes. But getting to the root of why something happened is the most worthwhile effort over thinking any one thing is insurmountable. Understanding why something happened helps diagnose and treat the underlying issues. We are the sum of all of our experiences, our past traumas, our baggage, our unexpressed expectations and sometimes that’s what's showing up in our relationship and course correction is needed.

MCN: What's next for the two of you?

CO: Tommy is running the production company he founded, called Confluential Films, and is a full-time producer, writer, director (and more). For me, Black Love is 365 days a year. We both run Black Love, Inc., but lead the team and oversee countless live and virtual events, custom video campaigns with brand partners, Black Love’s Podcast Network – I even host some of the podcasts, and I manage content for Black Love’s streaming platform, the Black Love+ App. We are committed to celebrating and affirming the Black community through the lens of love day in and day out.■

Turner Sports and CBS Sports have announced that former pro basketball player Grant Hill and former college basketball coach Bill Raftery will call the NCAA Final Fourand National Championship games on the networks this year. The two analysts will join the team of Jim Nantz and reporter Tracy Wolfson to call games together throughout the 2015 NCAA Tournament.

While Raftery is entering his 33rdyear calling the NCAA Tournament, Hill, who joined the collective NCAA Tournament coverage last year as a studio analyst, makes his debut this year as a tourney game analyst. The two team up with Nantz and Wolfson for the first time to call the Big Ten men’s basketball tournament semifinals on Saturday, March 14, and championship game on Sunday, March 15, on CBS.

Raftery has served as a regular-season and NCAA Tournament game analyst since joining CBS Sports in 1983. He also has been a game analyst for radio coverage of the NCAA Final Four for the last 23 years and has been elected as a 2015 inductee for the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame. Hill, a two-time NCAA basketball champion at Duke University and member of the College Basketball Hall of Fame, joined Turner Sports in 2013 following a 19-year NBA career. He is a game and studio analyst for Turner Sports, as well as host of NBA TV’s weekly NBA Inside Stuff show.

This marks the fifth consecutive year CBS Sports and Turner Sports will provide live coverage of all 67 games from the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship across four national television networks – TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV.  The Final Four on Saturday, April 4, will be televised on TBS, and the National Championship on Monday, April 6, will air on CBS.