The Cable Center said Wednesday that it will reschedule its 23rd annual Cable Hall of Fame celebration to Oct. 20 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City.

This is the fourth time the Center has had to reschedule the event. It was originally scheduled for April 30, 2020,  but was pushed to the fall of that year because of the pandemic.   In June 2020, it was rescheduled again to April 29, 2021.  

The Cable Hall of Fame inductees are: 

Bridget Baker: CEO Baker Media Inc.

Jim Blackley: Former EVP, IT and Engineering Charter Communications

Cathy Hughes: founder and chairwoman, Urban One

Alfred C. Liggins III: CEO, Urban One; chairman and CEO TV One

Jeff Marcus: Cable Pioneer

Dave Watson: president and CEO Comcast Cable

Jeff Zucker: chairman, WarnerMedia, News & Sports and president, CNN Worldwide 

The Bresnan Ethics in Business Award will also be presented to Ted Turner during the celebration. For those unable to gather in-person, the Cable Center said it will host a virtual celebration.

The Center said it is still confirming its plans for 2021 honorees. For more information on the celebration, visit www.cablehalloffame.com.

Urban One has elevated Michelle Rice to the position of TV One and Cleo TV president, the company announced Tuesday.

Rice, who has served as general manager of the Black targeted TV One and millennial women of color-targeted Cleo TV, will continue full oversight of both channels, said Alfred Liggins, president and CEO of Urban One, which owns both services.

"Michelle's dynamic leadership has strengthened network partnerships, developed strategic alliances, and expanded distribution for both TV One and Cleo TV. All of which has uniquely positioned our networks to navigate the changing broadcast environment and catapult them to even greater success in the future," said Liggins.

Rice, a Multichannel News Wonder Woman, was one of TV One’s original employees. Since being named general manager in 2018, Rice has expanded the network’s existing relationship with AT&T to include the launch of Cleo TV across Direct TV, AT&T TV, and AT&T Now. She also presided over a carriage agreement with streaming service Philo TV, the network’s first virtual MVPD distribution deal, according to Urban One. Rice also spearheaded the launch of Cleo TV in 2019.

Black News Channel has launched on leading satellite-TV platform DirecTV, which said it also will launch Cleo TV before the end of the year to greater diversify its program offerings. 

BNC, which overall launched in February, was added to channel 342 and to the DirecTV app on Aug. 31, AT&T-owned DirecTV said. “AT&T is committed to delivering programming that meets our customers’ diverse needs,” Rob Thun, EVP and Chief Content Officer, AT&T Communications, said in a release.

BNC said later it also will be available to stream on AT&T TV and AT&T Now. "News consumers in urban markets around the country with DirecTV will now have access to our uniquely specific content," Princell Hair, BNC's CEO, said in a statement. "We look forward to our relationship and the new access that this provides to our consumers.” 

Launched overall in 2019, Cleo TV is owned by Urban One, parent of TV One, which already is carried on AT&T's TV platforms including DirecTV (channel 328). Michelle Rice, TV One and Cleo TV general manager, said in a release: “We are excited about our continued partnership with AT&T as we further the reach and connectivity of Cleo TV.”

“We continue to build on our content offering and are very pleased to launch Black News Channel and Cleo TV," Thun also said in AT&T's release. "These additions further strengthen our diverse slate of content, and we’re excited to bring the networks’ important perspectives and unique programming to our channel portfolio.”

Cathy Hughes was supposed to follow her mother into music. Her mom played in an all-women’s swing orchestra, the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, and “she was determined that I would be Beyoncé,” her daughter said. Instead, Hughes got into media, where she has been breaking ground for 40 years.

Married and a mother at 17, Hughes began her media career in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, where she worked at KOWH, an African American-owned AM radio station. In 1973, the then-single mom moved with her son, Alfred, to Washington, D.C., where she lectured at Howard University’s School of Communications and worked as sales manager for the university’s radio station, WHUR. There, she created the distinctive “Quiet Storm” format that revolutionized urban radio. She would become Washington radio’s first female general manager.

RELATED: Magnificent Seven Earn Hall of Fame Honors

In 1980, Hughes purchased her first radio station, WOL Washington, applying to 32 banks before finding a lender to help finance the deal. At the AM station, she introduced another new format to the nation’s capital, “Talk from a Black Perspective.” Unable to afford to hire talk-show talent, she became the station’s morning show host. Five years later, Hughes’s son, Alfred Liggins, joined WOL as an account manager. WOL turned its first profit in 1986, and the next year, Hughes bought FM station WMMJ, also in Washington. Her company, Radio One, became an urban radio market leader with stations in multiple formats across the country.

Liggins took on more responsibility as Radio One grew, and in 1994 he took over day-to-day operations, with Hughes as CEO. Hughes said it was a smart move to make the transition when she did, instead of waiting until she was ready to retire, as many heads of family-owned businesses tend to do. “Parents wait too long to let go,” Hughes said. “It’s so hard to give the combination to the vault to the same child who would lose the keys to the front door.” The mother-son business partnership has endured and thrived. Liggins became CEO in 1997; Hughes is chair.

Radio One made its IPO in 1999, and Hughes became the first African-American woman to chair a publicly traded company. Hughes entered the cable industry in 2004 with the launch of TV One, in partnership with Comcast. The new cable channel was just the second entry into the African-American market. By 2006, TV One was available in more than 33 million households. Radio One was renamed Urban One in 2017, and is today a multimedia enterprise with radio stations, cable networks, syndicated programs, websites and marketing properties under its umbrella.

Hughes was inducted into the Black History Hall of Fame in 2000 and has received many awards and honors over the course of her career. In 2016, Howard University announced the naming of the Cathy Hughes School of Communications.

“My goal was always to be of service to my community,” she said.

Alfred Liggins literally grew up in the media business. He was 7 when he and his mother, Cathy Hughes, moved to Washington, D.C. Hughes worked as sales manager at WHUR, Howard University’s commercial radio station, and Liggins would head there every day after school to do his homework.

After high school, Liggins moved to Los Angeles to work in the music business while attending night classes at UCLA. He got a job at Light Records, a gospel music company, but had his eye on secular music. Thinking he had a job lined up at Motown, he quit Light Records. That’s when he learned “my first lesson of employment: never quit the job you have until you are absolutely certain of the job you think you’re going to get,” he said. The Motown job fell through, and Liggins was unemployed.

Hughes convinced her son to return to D.C. to work for her company, Radio One, which consisted of one station, WOL-AM. He joined Radio One as WOL’s account manager. Two years later, Hughes acquired a second station, WMMJ, and kept looking for acquisitions. Liggins worked his way up to president and treasurer as the company grew to three stations. As business partners, Liggins and Hughes made an excellent team. He was the financial expert, while she was the creator of programming that served listeners’ interests.

Before turning over control of Radio One’s operations, Hughes insisted that Liggins get an MBA. He graduated from the Wharton School of Business in 1995. On graduation day, Liggins told his mother that he planned to take Radio One public to enable larger-scale expansion. He was named CEO in 1997, with Hughes as board chair. Radio One went public in 1999, and the IPO made it possible for the company to grow quickly. Today, the Radio One network comprises stations in 16 urban markets.

RELATED: Magnificent Seven Earn Hall of Fame Honors

The strategy of buying small, underperforming urban stations and refocusing them to serve their communities’ demographics worked well. But Liggins also credits federal diversity and minority broadcast ownership policies for helping Radio One succeed. “I’d like to say that all of our success has been because we’re brilliant operators,” he said. “But no matter how smart you are, if you don’t get an opportunity to perform, you can’t win.”

Cable came into the picture for Liggins in 2004 with the launch of TV One, in partnership with Comcast. The cable channel was just the second to offer African- American entertainment, launching with 2.2 million households. TV One was designed to serve African-American adults who wanted an alternative to BET. Today, TV One serves 59 million households, offering “original programming, classic series, movies and music to its diverse audience of adult black viewers.”

Under Liggins’ leadership, Radio One continued to expand. In 2017, it was renamed Urban One and now comprises cable, radio, syndication, web and marketing properties, the largest U.S. multimedia company dedicated primarily to serving African-American, urban audiences.

Comcast will add two new African-American owned networks to its Xfinity TV lineups in January to satisfy provisions set during its purchase of NBCUniversal.

The two services, dubbed Cleo TV and Afro, will bring to eight the number of minority-owned networks Comcast promised to launch as part of its memorandum of understanding revolving around its 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal. The networks were chosen from a list of 50 proposed networks submitting requests for proposals (RFPs) for the two slots, according to Comcast senior executive vice president David Cohen.

“We had a lot of strong proposals,” Cohen said, adding that Comcast created a diverse advisory committee made up of Comcast employees to determine what networks would receive the two slots. Cohen also is Comcast's chief diversity officer.

Cleo TV, which will be owned and operated by TV One parent Urban One, will target millennial and Gen X African American women. TV One general manager Michelle Rice --who will oversee day-to-day operations of Cleo -- said that the network will create original content for an undeserved segment of the audience.

“We're at a pivotal moment in history where women are making a huge impact in our society and culture, especially women of color,” Rice said. “We view young women of this time as rule breakers and standard bearers, so Cleo will focus on lifestyle and entertainment programming targeting millennial and Gen X women.”

Afro, owned by Orlando-based production company Afrotainment, offer movies, dramas, sitcoms, music, talk, and late night comedy shows primarily targeted to African-American audiences. 

“We celebrate the richness and diversity of the Black culture with original and exclusive content with our tagline ‘All Shades of Black,’” said Yves Bollanga, founder and CEO of Afrotainment.

The new channels stem from a condition Comcast agreed to in its 2011 acquisition of NBCUniversal, in which it agreed to launch eight minority-owned and operated channels. Hispanic-owned channels Primo and Kids Central launched in 2016, following the 2012-2013 launches of four networks including kids-targeted BabyFirst Americas; music-themed service Revolt TV, founded by hip hop artist Sean “Diddy” Combs; African-American targeted entertainment network Aspire TV, led by NBA hall of famer Magic Johnson; and millennials-aimed El Rey Network, backed by producer and director Robert Rodriguez.

RELATED: Comcast to Launch Two Kids-Targeted Hispanic Networks 

Cohen said both networks will launch in January of 2019, but would not reveal specific subscriber numbers at launch. Sources close to the situation say the networks will launch with around eight to 10 million subscribers -- approximately the same amount as Comcast’s six prior minority-owned network launches. 

“They will be given significant carriage on our digital tier and comparable to what we’ve given the other six minority-owned MOU networks when we first launched them,” Cohen said. “We and they think its sufficient carriage to give them a shot at getting additional carriage and becoming financially viable.”

Cohen also said he believes the prior six networks have found success after initially launching on Comcast.

“They are all still on the air – some of them have been more successful than others – but they are all doing more than hanging in there,” he said. “The vision of this from our perspective was to determine if we helped get some networks started."

TV One president Brad Siegel is leaving the African-American targeted network, TV One officials said Tuesday.

Michelle Rice, the network’s executive vice president of content distribution and marketing, will serve as interim general manager with full management oversight of the 13-year old network effective immediately.

READ MORE:Upfronts 2016 -- TV One's Siegel Calls 'Empire' Acquisition a Game Changer

Siegel, who joined TV One as its president in 2014, announced his resignation to TV One’s leadership earlier in the day. “Brad has made many valuable contributions to the network during his tenure and we’re grateful for his work ethic, creativity, professionalism and support of our mission to inform, inspire and entertain the black community,” said TV One parent company Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins in a statement. "He’s also an all-around good guy and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Rice has been with the network since its launch and has held numerous executive positions within the company. She was a MCN Wonder Woman in 2016. “Michelle is business savvy, understands our demographic and has the energy, vision and discipline to position TV One for the future," Liggins said. "She has the respect of our industry and I believe in her ability to provide leadership for our network during this time of intense competition, increased platform availability and growing content targeting the black viewer."