Black News Channel Shuts Down Two Years After Launch

Black News Channel, a TV news station with people of color as its target audience, is shutting down Friday two years after launching.

The channel is filing for bankruptcy, but will air repeats for the rest of the month, according to a memo sent to employees from the channel's chief executive Princell Hair.

"During the past few months, we have endured very painful workforce reductions at all levels of the network as we worked to achieve our financial goal of a break-even business," Hair said in the memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The shutdown of Black News Channel means that 230 employees will be out of work. One person familiar with the matter told the Times that no severance will be paid but employee benefits will continue through next week.

Employees at the channel were reportedly angry by the news of the closure; however, they weren't surprised.

"This has forced all of you to do more with less, and your contributions have been remarkable. Unfortunately, due to challenging market conditions and global financial pressures, we have been unable to meet our financial goals, and the timeline afforded to us has run out," Hair's memo read.

The closure plans come after the news outlet didn't meet payroll on Friday after staffers were informed a day before that paychecks would be late.

The news channel has been searching for potential investors after majority stakeholder Shad Khan, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team, was no longer interested in investing further in the news service, according to the Times. Khan invested $50 million into the news channel by 2019.

As it continued to seek other investors, including Entertainment Studios, the company experienced several rounds of recent layoffs.

Black News Channel had an average audience size of less than 10,000 viewers, according to data and analytics company Nielsen. However, it has played a special role in the coverage of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer convicted in the killing of George Floyd in 2020, and in the trial of the three men sentenced in the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

Still, the news service had a reach of 50 million satellite and cable households and many of its employees came from well-established news companies to be part of a team that targeted a diverse audience, according to the Times.

The story has been updated to include additional information.

Newsweek contacted Black News Channel for comment and will update the story once a response is received.