Discovery said that BET founder Robert L. Johnson will join the Discovery board of directors, effective Jan. 1.

The company also announced that S. Decker Anstrom, who has been on the board since 2012 will be stepping down, effective Dec. 31. Anstrom is the former president of Weather Channel parent Landmark Communications and a past CEO of the NCTA.

In addition to BET, now a part of ViacomCBS, Johnson is founder and chairman of RLJ Cos., which sold its streaming business to AMC Networks.

Also Read: AMC Networks to Rebrand SVOD Service UMC as ALLBLK

"Bob is a legendary entrepreneur and one of media's true pioneers and innovators, dating back to his creation of BET and continuing throughout his distinguished career," said Robert Miron, chairman of Discovery's Board of Directors. "As we embark on a transformative year for Discovery, we are honored to add Bob as an independent director. We look forward to benefiting from his business acumen and exceptional track record in media." 

Anstrom had been a preferred stock director. Susan Swain, current common stock director on the Discovery board, will assume Anstrom’s role as a preferred stock director. 

"We are grateful to Decker for his many years of outstanding contributions to the Discovery Board," said Miron. "Discovery's stockholders have been well served by the dynamic skillset and wealth of experience in media, finance and government that Decker brought to our Board."

AMC Networks will rename the Robert Johnson Jr.-created Urban Movie Channel (UMC) subscription streaming service ALLBLK beginning in January 2021, the company announced Tuesday.

UMC, which Johnson launched in 2014 to feature African-American targeted movies, specials and series, was acquired by AMC Networks in 2018 as part of its acquisition of RLJ Entertainment. Subscription numbers for the $4.99 per month streaming service were not made available.  

The new ALLBLK will look to build on UMC’s content lineup with new, original scripted series in 2021, said AMC officials. New programs scheduled to launch on ALLBLK in 2021 include multi-cam comedy Millennials, sitcom Partners In Rhyme, legal drama Lace, haircare makeover series My Mane Problem, and the Datari Turner/eOne reality series Notorious Queens.

“As our SVOD services continue to develop loyal subscription bases, establishing strong brands that cater to the targeted interests of our viewership is highly imperative,” said AMC Networks SVOD President, Miguel Penella in a statement. “UMC’s rebranding as ALLBLK speaks to the need for curated entertainment experiences immersed in authenticity and targeted to the viewing interest of Black Americans, specifically the Black female audience.”

Added Johnson: “UMC began as a distribution model for Black creatives to directly reach the then largely underserved African American audience without the restrictions of legacy content development and traditional broadcast models. As technology advances and programming demands from our community evolve, the rebranded ALLBLK will be well positioned to breakout as the preeminent streaming destination for viewers seeking Black entertainment.”

The move comes on the heels of AMC naming former UMC COO Brett Dismuke as general manager of UMC and WE tv. “While we’re revamping our brand, what remains constant is our commitment to providing a home for Black creatives in front of and behind the camera to find opportunity and tell captivating stories," Dismuke said. "As we enter a new era of diversity and reflection in the entertainment industry, we’re excited for audiences to experience what will soon be ALLBLK.”

Urban Movie Channel president Traci Otey Blunt has been named senior vice president of corporate communications for the National Football League, the company said Friday.

Blunt, who served as the president of BET founder Robert Johnson's African-American targeted OTT subscription streaming service since 2017, will now lead communications strategies across key areas within the NFL, including current affairs, business operations, NFL Media, government affairs, health and safety and social responsibility, according to the league.

Prior to joining Johnson's RLJ Entertainment and UMC in 2008, Blunt worked in various communications and public affairs positions, including at two global PR agencies as well as on mayoral, gubernatorial, and presidential campaigns.

RELATED: AMC Acquires RLJ Entertainment for $65 Million 

“We are excited to have Traci join the communications team and welcome her to the NFL family,” said Jocelyn Moore, executive vice president of communications and public affairs, to whom Blunt will report. “Traci has a wide range of experience across various business sectors that will be a tremendous asset to the League, and we look forward to the leadership and energy that she will bring to the NFL.” 

Marina del Rey, Calif -- OTT services are not breaking new ground on stortelling, but have found better ways to package and deliver those stories to consumers compared to their linear TV competitors, RLJ Entertainment Robert L. Johnson said during the Aug. 2 OTT Video Summit.

“What they have done is recognized that the technology platform allows the content to be maximized in any way possible,” Johnson said in an exclusive Multichannel News video interview. “The stories are the stories; they’ve just said we’re going to process them through the technology in ways that enhance people’s enjoyment of the programming.”

Johnson, who founded BET and currently oversees OTT services Urban Movie Channel (UMC) and Acorn TV, also attributed the success of streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu to their ability to deliver quality content to consumers to watch at their leisure on multiple devices.

“Netflix would be a complete failure if it became a Netflix TV station, and they put on a show at 9 o’clock, 8 o’clock, 10 o’clock, and just repeat it,” he said. 

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) teamed up to make a last-minute push for FCC chairman Tom Wheeler's latest, apps-based, set-top box proposal.

The FCC is still set to vote on that proposal Sept. 29 despite pushback from some of Markey and Eshoo's Democratic colleagues.

At a press conference on Tuesday (Sept. 27), Markey said the FCC had shown its willingness to address concerns about the initial proposal, had done so in the new proposal by adopting the apps-based approach suggested by ISPs, and that "every month" without new rules is another month of consumers paying exorbitant rental fees for "relics of the past."

Eshoo seemed to signal that programmers were now supportive of the FCC proposal, though she later said she was citing an ex parte from Sept. 22 in which those programmers signaled progress, but still said having an apps licensing body was a nonstarter. Eshoo said that the letter "expresses movement."

The same principal cast on the press call held a similar press conference back in June backing the chairman's initial "unlock the box" proposal.

Joining them in the call were Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who along with Markey has been pushing hard for a set-top rules revamp, along with various public interest group representatives; BET founder Robert Johnson, now heading RLJ Entertainment, and Allison Abner from the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW).

A representative of Best Buy, which would benefit from a robust third-party device market to sell against leased boxes, offered his support for the FCC proposal as well.

Johnson, who is now an online video entrepreneur, has been pushing for the proposal as a way to give online video providers more exposure alongside traditional video fare, while purveyors of that traditional fare are concerned that could threaten the business model and contracts of established diverse programmers.

Wheeler's revised plan would make set-top box data and programming available to third-party apps and navigation devices, as a way to finally create competition to set-tops--99% of those are still rented from an MVPD--as well as giving online video a boost as a competitor to traditional cable and satellite.

Johnson said that just as BET would not have existed had cable not "broken the broadcast monopoly," new over-the-top offerings, like his own, will not be able to flourish unless the FCC eliminates cable's "stranglehold" on set-top boxes.

He said that would allow new diverse voices to flourish. He said he had told Wheeler that the set-top decision is the most important decision the FCC has ever made in terms of enhancing diversity and access.

Asked why the NAACP, Urban League and other diversity groups are not supportive of the plan, Johnson said that he said he didn't think they "quite understand the upside benefits of the apps-based approach," and that some of the incumbents, including BET, are afraid that the a la carte regime the set-top proposal represents will lead to their being dropped due to their cost.

Johnson suggested that while that might be the case, the government should not be choosing winners and loser.

Asked why over 60 of her fellow Democrats have asked the FCC to put out the plan for comment rather than vote on it this week, she said she had talked to some of them and they had a "lack of understanding about the revised proposal and what it would do for their constituents." She said they also did not understand that the new proposal kept MVPD content within the new app, which she said was very, very significant. She suggested the lead on that colleague letter should have said: "Regarding throwing sand in the gears."

A transgender father struggles to come out to his self-absorbed kids who are dealing with their own sexual issues and identities. A hyper-aggressive, African-American lesbian inmate has the hots for a white inmate from the suburbs who mixes with a virtual ethnic rainbow of female prisoners at a federal correctional facility.

The unique and trans-cendent diversity of Jeffrey Tambor’s character of Morton/Maura Pfefferman in Amazon Prime Instant Video’s dramedy series Transparent, and Uzo Aduba’s portrayal of Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in Netflix’s prison series Orange Is the New Black have made the two over-the-top services credible players in depicting diverse characters on television.

Their respective portrayals also earned Tambor the first-ever Golden Globe award for the portrayal of a transgender character and Aduba a rare Emmy Award for an African-American actress.

And in a 2014-15 television season that’s arguably been one of the most prolific ever for multicultural broadcast and cable shows (with such breakout hits as Fox’s Empire, The CW’s Jane the Virgin, ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat and Black-ish and Starz’s Power), it might be OTT that provides the ultimate platform for content depicting diversity for both multicultural and mainstream audiences.

ULTIMATE DIVERSE PLATFORM?

Established over-the-top services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon have a unique opportunity to target multicultural viewers by offering content directly to an audience that increasingly streams its favorite content to smartphones, tablets and TV sets, executives said. Meanwhile, new multicultural OTT services like Urban Movie Channel, created by BET founder Bob Johnson, are creating targeted online-video services for specific segments of the multicultural audience.

“Over-the-top streaming is a quintessential answer to diversity because it allows consumers to access exactly the kind of content they want to access targeted to their primary viewing interest, whether it’s based on ethnicity, cultural behavior, or social interests or gender issues,” Johnson said. “There is no limitation on access and no limitations posed by gatekeepers if the consumers are willing to access the programming on an advertiser mode or a pay-basis mode.”

There is certainly a viable, growing multicultural audience for online video providers to mine. African-American and Hispanic viewers spent more time watching video content via the Internet or on smartphones on a monthly basis in the fourth quarter of 2014 than they did in the same period in 2013, per Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for the timeframe.

Further, multicultural viewers over-index on subscriptions to cable, SVOD, OTT and other pay TV services when compared with their white counterparts, according to a recent Horowitz Research study on the State of Viewing in the Age of OTT. Nearly 90% of African- Americans subscribe to some form of pay service, compared to 87% of Hispanics and 80% of Asian-Americans. Among whites, 75% have some form of pay TV subscription, according to Horowitz.

“This younger generation that is on these platforms is so diverse, naturally, that they will fi nd shows that are great and appeal to them,” said Rodrigo Mazon, director of content acquisitions for streaming service Hulu. “We do prioritize the audience that has been underserved traditionally, but it’s truly about great stories and shows that have a diverse and authentic composition.”

Indeed, the expanding multicultural online audience has not been lost on the top OTT providers. For one, Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black has one of television’s most diverse casts, which netted Orange casting director Jennifer Euston a 2014 Emmy for outstanding casting in a drama series.

NATURAL FOR YOUNGER DEMOS

Orange’s Aduba in her Emmy acceptance speech for best supporting actress in a comedy series last August singled out Netflix “for putting something like this on television so that everyone can be represented in such a beautiful way.”

At the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour this past January, Netflix chief creative officer Ted Sarandos touted the diverse casts of Orange and of drama series Marco Polo as examples of the streaming service’s concerted effort to create more original programming with multicultural appeal. Netflix also signed Men In Black 2 star Rosario Dawson to appear in its upcoming Marvel Comics-based series Daredevil.

“Netflix was born on the Internet, so our demographic was younger and more male when we were beginning, [but] it’s far more mainstream today,” Sarandos told more than 200 reporters at the TCA tour. “So you really are covering all demographics and trying to find programming that people love and attach to in a way that leads to retention and creates a brand halo for Netflix as well. We really are trying to program something for everyone.”

Hulu, which already offers same-day replays of such shows as Empire, Jane the Virgin and Black-ish, also wants to ramp up its multicultural viewer appeal through its original content, Mazon said. Hulu original drama East Los High, with an all-Hispanic cast, is the linchpin of the network’s Latino-themed content, which also includes acquired movies and series from Latin America.

“We’ve been committed to diverse, multicultural millennial audiences and content before that and this just reaffirms that,” Mazon said. East Los High, which chronicles the lives of Latino students in a fictional Los Angeles High School, will launch its third season later this year. The service last fall also launched unscripted series Los Cowboys, which focuses on a multigenerational family steeped in the sport of Mexican rodeo.

For Amazon, diversity isn’t limited to ethnicity. The studio’s dramedy series Transparent has been lauded for Tambor’s breakthrough portrayal of a middle- aged transgendered father; he won a Golden Globe for best actor in a television music or comedy series this past January. The series also won a Globe for best musical or comedy.

But established OTT services are not the only choices for diverse viewers. Other startup services, such as Urban Movie Channel, are looking to get into OTT on the ground floor.

UMC’s Johnson said today’s OTT business looks a lot like cable in the early 1980s, when networks looked to differentiate themselves from the broadly focused broadcasters by targeting niche audiences.

Johnson, who launched BET in the early 1980s as the first TV network specifically for African-Americans, added that producers of quality content aimed at multicultural audiences have a great opportunity for success at this early stage of the industry’s development.

Urban Movie Channel, which launched last November as an SVOD service, offers urban-themed documentaries, comedies, horror films and stage plays targeted to a predominately African- American audience.

UMC recently secured the VOD rights to the much anticipated independent film Blackbird starring Isaiah Washington and Mo’Nique. The movie will have a limited run in theaters before it streams on the UMC SVOD service later this summer.

“The OTT content providers of today are a lot like the content providers of yesterday,” Johnson said. “Their mindset to some extent is to go for scale and large audiences, and tend not to think about targeting micro audiences or unique diverse audiences. We’re going to take advantage of that window and build us a unique brand, much like I built BET into that unique brand.”

OUT OF AFRICA

Cable network Africa Channel will launch an OTT service in 2016 that will feature African-themed content from the channel as well as exclusive content created on the continent, according to vice president of marketing and digital Brian Newton.

“We look at [OTT] as evening the playing field,” said Newton, whose service has struggled to gain linear MVPD distribution. “Right now, you have all these people at home paying for channels that they don’t watch, and they do not see themselves reflected, so there will come a time when the viewer will have a choice to spend $5 a month to access programming that reflects their sensibilities all the time as opposed to a more expensive package that may do that part of the time.”

Hulu’s Mazon expects to see more multicultural programming in general pop up on both traditional TV networks as well as in the OTT space, all competing for the eyeballs and dollars of multicultural viewers.

“I think because of the young, multicultural demographic that exists today, a lot of content is being developed and created to target that audience,” Mazon said. “Voices are being heard more loudly now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing a lot more multicultural [content] done in an authentic way.”

Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson will once again seek out African-American and urban audiences with a new subscription video-on-demand service called UMC — Urban Movie Channel. He spoke with Multichannel News programming editor R. Thomas Umstead about the service, which will offer more than 150 titles of programming with plans to add original series, movies and other programming in the near future ($2.99-$4.99 per month), and the evolving television landscape.

MCN: Why did you decide to launch UMC as a subscription digital channel?

Robert Johnson: The media landscape is changing dramatically because of digital technology, the elimination of gatekeepers in terms of delivering content to an audience and the desire of the consumer to have content that appeals to their direct interests on whatever mobile and digital device they have at their command. People are breaking free from having programmers that determine what they see and how much they pay for.

Just as I looked at cable as a way to break free from broadcasting and target niche audiences, I see the new platform of digital [video] as offering the same opportunity in providing targeted programming to an audience who wants to see what they want to see and is ultimately willing to pay for only what they want to see.

MCN: Does you feel that new online platforms give you more opportunities to offer a diversity of programming options than you had when you launched BET?

RJ: There has never been a targeted African- American-oriented channel that has been free from the limitations of what advertisers think they want to advertise in. We can be creative and aggressive in content.

When I was at BET and I wanted to put on a show, the advertisers would often say no, because it’s either too aggressive culturally or sensual for an African-American-targeted show. Then we would sit back and watch everybody else do those same type of shows, but the advertisers took a different tact with black-oriented programming. That’s why I think this is the perfect time to launch this channel.

MCN: How can you adequately market and promote UMC to digital African-American audiences?

RJ: This question is the question I was asked 30 years ago with BET, and with a company worth $4 billion dollars later, I figured it out. The answer to that question is that we have to put on programming that people want to see. All of these stories that African-American producers want to tell but have been denied because they didn’t fit the studio model or the advertiser model, are now possible with this subscription- based channel.

MCN: Do you think that cable’s African-Americantargeted channels are adequately serving the audience?

RJ: I’m not going to judge those guys and what they do. I just think the digital model is the way to go, to target audiences so that they can watch what they want to watch and pay for just what they want to watch. The other channels that are tied in as part of the cable cluster forces someone to pay upwards of almost $75 to $100 for programming they never look at. That’s not an economically viable system longterm as the convergence of digital, streaming and big, [smart] television sets comes about. For us this is the right place to be from a technological, economic and programming standpoint. That’s the way we see this opportunity — it’s in the right place at the right time.

MCN: Given your decision to launch over the top, rather than as a cable channel, do you believe cable is on its last legs?

RJ: No, not at all. I think cable will be around for a long time. I do think that it’s the beginning of a growing pressure on the cable industry to figure out a way to reduce the rising costs of programming.