TV One (American TV channel)
Country United States
Broadcast area Nationwide
Headquarters Silver Spring, Maryland Picture format HDTV 1080i
(downscaled to letterboxed 480i for the SDTV feed)
owner Urban One
Sister channels Cleo TV
Launched January 19, 2004; 19 years ago
Website tvone.tv
TV One is an American basic cable television channel owned by Urban One, having acquired Comcast’s stake in the TV channel in 2015. Headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, TV One’s programming targets African American adults with a broad mixture of original lifestyle and entertainment-oriented series, documentaries, films, music performances, and reruns of sitcoms from the 1970s through the 2000s. As of February 2015, TV One is available to approximately 57 million pay television households (48.9% of households with at least one television set) in the United States.
TV One launched on January 19, 2004, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, as a competitor to the longer-established BET. At the time of its launch, the channel was in approximately 2.2 million homes in 16 markets. On July 7, 2008, the channel’s president and CEO Johnathan Rodgers announced that TV One would provide extensive coverage of the Democratic National Convention that August. In 2011, TV One’s original co-owner Comcast acquired NBCUniversal, effectively integrating TV One and the other Comcast Entertainment Group channels into NBCUniversal’s portfolio.
In August 2012, TV One updated its on-air look and logo, as part of a plan to “tell stories about how African-American life unfolds and to distinguish it from a growing number of competitors.” On July 9, 2013, TV One announced that it would debut its first live one-hour, weekday morning news program that would be hosted by commentator Roland S. Martin. The program, News One Now, premiered on November 4, 2013.
In December 2014, Brad Siegel was hired as president of TV One. Siegel was formerly president of Turner Entertainment Networks, and vice chairman of Up TV, which he co-founded in 2004.
In March 2015, Radio One announced a deal to buy out Comcast’s 47.9% share of TV One for $550 million.
In February 2016, TV One updated their logo again, along with a new slogan: “Represent.”
Membership and affiliations
Associate member of the Caribbean Cable & Telecommunications Association, Inc. – CCTA
Programming
Aspire – an American digital cable and satellite channel owned by businessman and former basketball player Magic Johnson
BET – The flagship American basic cable and satellite channel of the BET Networks, currently owned by Paramount Global, which launched in 1980 as the first television channel devoted to programming targeting African-Americans
BET Her – A spinoff channel targeting African-American women
Bounce TV – an American digital multicast channel owned by the E. W. Scripps Company
Cleo TV – a sister channel to TV One targeting African-American women