Bounce TV

History

Founding and launch

The founding group and initial ownership team included Martin Luther King III; former mayor of Atlanta, Georgia and ambassador of the United States to the United Nations; Andrew Young and his son Andrew "Bo" Young III; Rob Hardy; and Will Packer. Hardy and Packer are also co-founders of Rainforest Films, a top African-American production company. Spearheading the network's creation were former Turner Broadcasting System executives Jonathan Katz and Ryan Glover with the pair having previously worked together with Tyler Perry to produce a number of high-order African-American sitcoms for TBS. Currently, Glover is president of Bounce TV and Katz is Chief Operating Officer. The "Bounce TV" name was chosen as a branding avenue to signify that the network is "going somewhere with energy".

The network formally launched on September 26, 2011 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time Zone, with the 1978 musical film The Wiz as its inaugural broadcast followed by A Raisin in the Sun with Do the Right Thing in primetime.

In 2012, Bounce began airing original programming. Its first was the documentary Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Historical Perspective on January 16, 2012, in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. On June 18, 2012, Bounce premiered the sitcom Family Time, and the stand-up comedy series Uptown Comic.

The network acquired its first sitcoms in January 2015. It acquired the rights to four series through deals with Warner Bros. Television Studios (The Parent 'Hood and Roc), The Carsey–Warner Company (A Different World), CBS Television Distribution/Big Ticket Entertainment (Judge Joe Brown), 20th Television (The Hughleys) and Trifecta Entertainment & Media (Judge Faith). The 1990s CBS series Cosby was immediately removed from Bounce's schedule on July 7, 2015 after Bill Cosby's past admissions about his sexual assault allegations were publicized.

Bounce would premiere several notable original programs and tent-pole event broadcasts in 2016. On Friday, January 29, the network broadcast the 24th Annual Trumpet Awards; which honored history-making individuals. On March 6, 2016, Bounce debuted its original primetime soap, Saints & Sinners. The series premiere was watched in 1.3 million viewers, making it Bounce TV's most-watched program at the time. The network's first primetime news magazine, Ed Gordon, was announced in late June 2016, and premiered on Tuesday, September 13.

Scripps ownership

On October 2, 2017, E. W. Scripps Company purchased Bounce TV, along with Katz Broadcasting's three other networks. A list of 2019 Nielsen Media Research ratings published by Variety indicated that Bounce averaged 275,000 viewers in prime time, down 1% from the 2018 average.

Bounce and sister channel Grit TV were added to DirecTV on September 1, 2022.

On April 23, 2024, it was reported that Scripps is looking to sell Bounce TV.

Programming

Bounce TV features programming geared toward an African-American audience that skews older than the demographic of most cable networks (such as rival cable network BET); primarily adults between the ages of 25 and 54. The network's main programming features a mix of scripted series reruns and feature film telecasts. Unlike most digital multicast services (particularly with the January 2015 shutdown of Localish, which mainly carried first-run content), Bounce also produces its own original programming. The network has produced inspirational and music programming, documentaries, scripted comedies and dramas, films, and specials.

Sports

Shortly before its launch, Bounce TV reached an agreement with the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (a league that includes several historically black colleges and universities) to acquire the television rights to broadcast its American football and basketball games; the telecasts were produced by Urban Sports Entertainment Group. The first sports broadcast on Bounce TV aired on September 28, 2011, a college football game between Bowie State University and Virginia Union University.

On May 7, 2015, Bounce TV announced that they would be airing live boxing events from Premier Boxing Champions under the title: PBC: The Next Round.

List of programs broadcast by Bounce TV

Current programming

Original

Syndicated

• The Bernie Mac Show
• Couples Court with the Cutlers
• • Family Feud Favorites*
• Inspiration Ministries Campmeeting
• In the Heat of the Night
• The Jennifer Hudson Show
• Karamo
• Lauren Lake's Paternity Court
• Sherri
• Someone They Knew with Tamron Hall
• Superior Donuts
• Tamron Hall

Former original programming

Drama

Comedy

Docuseries

Reality

Variety

Former syndicated programming

• America's Black Forum
• A Different World
• B. Smith with Style
• Black and Blue
• Black College Quiz
• Catch 21
• The Cosby Show
• Cosby
• Everybody Hates Chris
• Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids
• Forgive or Forget
• The Game
• Greenleaf
• Half & Half
• Hot Bench
• The Hughleys
• Judge Faith
• Judge Hatchett
• Judge Joe Brown
• Law & Order
• Living Single
• Moesha
• NCIS: New Orleans
• The Newlywed Game
• Nick Cannon
• OJ25
• One on One
• The Parent 'Hood
• Personal Injury Court
• The Real (day-after repeats)
• Roc
• Scandal
• Soul Train
• The Wendy Williams Show (day-after repeats)
• With Drawn Arms
• Without a Trace

Affiliates

Main article: List of Bounce TV affiliates

As of December 2014, Bounce TV has current or pending affiliation agreements with television stations in 43 media markets encompassing 22 states and the Washington, D.C., covering 73% of all households of at least one television set in the United States and 90% of African-American households. The network encourages its affiliates to carry local news programming in place of regular programming on the Bounce-affiliated subchannel, as a way to attract additional viewers to that subchannel and serve the local market. Affiliates also broadcast local public affairs programs, political specials, and college football and basketball games played by predominantly black schools. In Bounce TV's Home city Atlanta, ABC affiliate WSB-TV (channel 2), owned by Cox Media Group, is the Atlanta affiliate for Bounce TV.

Before its launch, Bounce TV actively sought affiliation agreements with various television station owners to make the network widely available throughout the United States. The network launched with clearance rate of, at minimum, 32% of overall American television households, in part due to affiliation agreements with stations owned by Nexstar Media Group, Gray Television, Lockwood Broadcast Group, and the E. W. Scripps Company.

In November 2011, Bounce TV reached a groupwide affiliation deal with Fox Television Stations to carry the network on the subchannels of its MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station in markets such as New York City (WWOR-TV) and Los Angeles (KCOP-TV). The deal, which marked Fox Television Station's first multicasting arrangement, put Bounce TV over its earlier stated goal of reaching at least 50% of overall U.S. television households.

In December 2012, the network signed a multi-station agreement with Spanish language broadcaster Univision Communications to carry its programming on seven of its Univision and UniMás owned-and-operated television stations (besides being the company's first multicasting agreement, it was also Univision Television Group's first affiliation deal involving an English language network). As part of an extension of this agreement in March 2014, Bounce TV will move its affiliation in five markets where it had existing affiliation deals with Fox at the time of the deal (New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, Orlando, Florida, and Phoenix, Arizona) to stations owned by Univision in 2015. The Fox deal ended after the 2015 launch of game show channel Buzzr, with Bounce then moving in full to Univision stations after that point.

On June 15, 2016, Katz Broadcasting (whose president and CEO Jonathan Katz is COO of Bounce TV) signed an agreement with Nexstar Broadcasting Group that would bring Bounce TV to 15 new markets, as part of a massive rollout also involving Katz's three networks Escape, Laff, and Grit. In 2019, Raycom merged with Gray Television, which will maintain their Bounce affiliations as-is.

Although Bounce TV prefers that its local affiliates carry the entire schedule, some affiliates regularly pre-empt certain network programs in order to air morning and/or prime time newscasts produced by the station specifically for the subchannel or public affairs programs (such as with WBTV in Charlotte and WAVE-TV in Louisville); this has become particularly more common since September 2015, when other Gray Television-owned stations in markets where the group does not maintain a duopoly (as is the case with WBTV and WAVE-TV, which launched theirs earlier) gradually began launching prime time newscasts on their Bounce TV-affiliated subchannels. Some of the major network affiliates that carry Bounce TV full-time (such as WBTV, WAVE-TV and WAFF in Huntsville) use the affiliated subchannel as a buffer during network sports coverage, breaking news or severe weather coverage situations to carry regularly scheduled network and/or syndicated programming seen on its main channel.

Following Scripps' acquisition of Ion Media on January 7, 2021, Scripps began to wind down the Univision deal, and Bounce TV was moved off those stations to Ion Media stations at the start of March, though it remains on a Univision station in markets where Scripps or Ion do not operate stations.

Bounce Media

Andrew Young

Bounce Media operates Bounce TV and is owned by its founding group plus Raycom Media and Al Haymon. With share staff and some owners, Katz Broadcasting is an affiliate company.1

Originally, Bounce Media sold the network to affiliated TV stations via ad split but by October 2015 had moved to a carriage fee in exchange for the network get the ad inventory due to greater inventory with stations adding a third or fourth subchannel.1 Bounce used direct response advertising as a meter of viewers before switching to Nielsen rating C-3 a few years before 2015.3

Bounce launched a companion SVOD service, Brown Sugar by November 17, 2016. Brown Sugar features '70s-era blaxploitation films. The service has access to start to a total of 111 films including Blacula, Cleopatra Jones, Foxy Brown, The Mack, Super Fly, and Shaft.

On August 1, 2017, E. W. Scripps announced the purchase of Bounce and Katz Broadcasting, which operates Bounce and owns three networks, for $292 million, acquiring the other 95% of the company. Bounce will remain based out of Marietta, Georgia and retain Jonathan Katz as head. The purchase was completed on October 2, 2017.

Brown Sugar

Brown Sugar is a video on demand service owned by Bounce Media, LLC. A companion to the main Bounce network, Brown Sugar was launched on November 17, 2016.

The service features '70s-era blaxploitation films via app, the web The service has access to over 111 films including Blacula, Cleopatra Jones, Foxy Brown, The Mack, Super Fly, and Shaft. On Friday, August 4, 2017, Brown Sugar launched on Roku; boxing matches and in-season original Bounce series have since been added.

Unofficial BounceTV YouTube channel + Shoevision

There is an unofficial YouTube channel called "BounceTV", which solely composes of clips of BounceTV programming played on a phone leaned against a shoe on a bed. This was discussed by YouTuber KVN AUST in 2023 in his series of discussing strange obscure YouTube channels he's discovered.

2 years later, KVN AUST discovered another channel (very likely) being run by the same person, composing of the exact same video format (except with a different TV channel) in his "YouTube's Recycle Bin" series, which consisted of finding and reacting to obscure YouTube videos with titles such as "IMG 1234".

This prompted him to reverse image search the videos, only to discover the anonymous uploader has created even more unofficial TV channels consisting of the same format, with videos being uploaded to several other platforms, such as Dailymotion and LinkedIn. He dubbed this phenomenon as "Shoevision" (a portmanteau of "shoe" + "television") in a YouTube comment.

List of known websites the Shoevision guy uploaded to

• YouTube

• Dailymotion

• TikTok

• LinkedIn

• Internet Archive

• Vimeo

• VidLii

• Epicube

List of known Shoevision channels by website

Gallery

File:BounceTV WTXL.png File:KCEC Bounce Denver logo.png

References

References

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2. Molloy, Tim. (September 25, 2011). "Black-Oriented Bounce TV Begins, Betting on Classic Movies". The Wrap.
3. Lafayette, Jon. (August 11, 2014). "Katz Shows True Grit Building Multicast Empire". Broadcasting & Cable.
4. Jessell, Harry. (May 10, 2011). "Bounce Set To Jump Into the Multicast Game". TV News Check.
5. Lafayette, Jon. (August 24, 2011). "EXCLUSIVE: 'The Wiz' Will Lead Off Bounce TV Programming". Broadcasting & Cable.
6. (January 11, 2012). "Bounce TV Airing Martin Luther King Documentary". TV News Check.
7. (June 14, 2012). "Bounce TV To Premiere First Two Original Series". TV News Check.
8. Jon Lafayette. (December 16, 2014). "Bounce TV Acquires First Four Off-Net Series". Broadcasting & Cable.
9. Steiner, Amanda Michelle. (July 7, 2015). "Bill Cosby reruns pulled from BET's Centric, Bounce TV".
10. (January 28, 2016). "Bounce TV To Air Trumpet Awards". TVNewsCheck.com.
11. Petski, Denise. (March 9, 2016). "'Saints & Sinners' Premiere Breaks Ratings Record For Bounce TV". [[Deadline Hollywood]].
12. (June 29, 2016). "Bounce TV's First News Mag To Debut Sept. 13". TVNewsCheck.
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14. (October 2, 2017). "E.W. Scripps Closes $302M Katz Purchase". TVNewsCheck.com.
15. (August 8, 2017). "The E.W. Scripps Company (SSP)". SeekingAlpha.com.
16. (26 Dec 2019). "Most-Watched Television Networks: Ranking 2019's Winners and Losers". [[Variety (magazine).
17. (https://www.directv.com/binge/directv-adds-bounce-and-grit-to-channel-lineup/ )
18. Sherman, Alex. (April 23, 2024). "E.W. Scripps exploring sale of Black-culture broadcast network Bounce TV". [[CNBC]].
19. (May 7, 2015). "Bounce TV Unveils 2015-16 Upfront Programming Slate". Bounce TV.
20. Petski, Denise. (February 2, 2022). "'Saints & Sinners' Renewed For Sixth & Final Season On Bounce – Watch The Trailer".
21. "Shows".
22. Evans, Greg. (February 15, 2018). "Bounce Plans Weeknight Airings Of 'The Wendy Williams Show'". [[Deadline Hollywood]].
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27. (January 2, 2012). "Bounce TV Adds Eight Stations To Start 2012". TVNewsCheck.
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29. Lafayette, Jon. (March 4, 2014). "Exclusive: Bounce TV Extends Univision Deal". Broadcasting & Cable.
30. Jon Lafayette. (June 15, 2016). "Bounce TV, Grit, Escape, Laff Multicast Deal Covers 81 Stations, 54 Markets".
31. Diana Marszalek. (July 23, 2013). "News Finds A New Home Among Diginets". NewsCheck Media.
32. January 2021, Michael Balderston 14. (2021-01-14). "Scripps Moving Multicast Networks onto Ion TV Stations".
33. (October 13, 2015). "OTA The Bedrock of Katz's Growing Diginets". TVNewsCheck.
34. (November 17, 2016). "'Like Netflix, Only Blacker': Brown Sugar Blaxploitation-Movie Subscription VOD Service Launches". Variety.
35. Marszalek, Diana. (August 1, 2017). "E.W. Scripps Buys Katz Networks in $302M Deal". [[Broadcasting & Cable]].
36. (October 2, 2017). "E.W. Scripps Closes $302M Katz Purchase". TVNewsCheck.com.
37. (August 4, 2017). "Brown Sugar Streaming Service Launches on Roku (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety.
38. "BounceTV".
39. KVN AUST. (2023-09-25). "YouTube’s Recycle Bin: Weird & Funny Finds w/ 0 views #1".
40. KVN AUST. (2025-12-05). "We mapped out "0-view YouTube" {{!}} YouTube's Recycle Bin 5".