What Roland Martin Wants You To Know About The BNC Purchase & The Need For Black-Owned News Media
Roland Martin has been described as a confident truth-teller with the pulse of Black America. As an American journalist, author, political analyst, and commentator, he is the recipient of two NAACP Image Awards for Best Interview and was named by Ebony Magazine as one of the 150 Most Influential African Americans in the United States three times in a row. His star power elevated as a commentator for CNN from 2007 to 2013.
In 2018, Martin invested $400,000 of his own money to launch #RolandMartinUnfiltered, a streaming news show that has garnered almost 900,000 subscribers since launching—becoming one of seven shows for his Black Star Network. The digital series is a daily two-hour program where the journalist leads discussions with reputable experts on top political subjects and examines them through the lens of what it means to Black Americans—a format not popular among advertisement agencies.
In a recent episode, Martin emphasizes the importance of Black-news media after the $11 million purchase of the Black News Channel (BNC) by Allen Media Group. Before the purchase, the journalist did a deep dive on the rise and fall of the BNC. The BNC was a 24-hour news channel that filed for bankruptcy earlier this year before Allen acquired its assets and merged it with his network TheGrio. Martin states this merger will no longer support the 24-hour news broadcast format BNC had. The loss of BNC emphasizes a message Martin wants others to understand: "We [the Black community] are being starved for information."
While significant strides have been made in recent years to diversify the entertainment industry resulting in more scripted and reality POC programming, Martin points out a lack of Black-owned news media dedicated to providing quality news content to a Black audience. The type of content that is essential to inform and educate a community. However, ad investors are likelier to invest in entertainment programming they deem "brand safe" than quality news programming they believe can be divisive or controversial. These ad investments then cause entertainment shows to rate, making them more likely to be where ad agencies reinvest money— repeating the cycle. Martin points out that $322 billion is spent a year on advertising, and Black-owned media receives 0.5 to 1% of that money –But the irony is Black Americans watch more live TV than any other group. "We have to be willing to make it clear we are not going to continue spending our money with companies that will not turn around and invest in us," said Martin.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Martin states the Black Star Network has developed a few non-news shows like the celebrity interview series: Rollin' With Roland to gain more advertisers' support. But, regardless of their financial support or not, he will never deviate from being a voice that confronts voting rights, social justice, and other issues facing his community.
Networks and businesses use advertisement funds to expand and operate; without these funds, there are limited to no operations. Black-owned media, especially black-news media, cannot grow without ad revenue, and Martin cites the fall of the BNC as proof. BNC's format as a linear network kept them from receiving subscription fees and relied solely on ad revenue, meaning they were operating with a lack of money.
The episode emphasizes that Black Americans being the top consumers of live TV should mean that networks like the BNC, Black Star Network, and other Black-owned media like it should receive around $100 million in advertising based on portfolio numbers. But they don't receive even 10%, according to the journalist. With the proper ad funding, his show and those like it could reach many more people. Martin supplements his network's lack of ad revenue with fan donations and self-funding to provide informative content that causes critical thinking about the on-goings that affect the Black community because Martin believes in the power of truth and sources dedicated to his community. He hopes major corporate leaders will one day stand for change and not shy away from calling out bureaucratic unfairness.
When Martin described his entrepreneurial vision to the Los Angeles Times, he cited an 1827 quote from Freedom's Journal, the nation's first Black newspaper: "We wish to plead our own cause; too long have others spoken for us."
