By adding a digital subchannel of Gannett Broadcasting's WUSA in Washington DC to its lineup, African-American network Bounce TV has cleared 50 percent of the country (and an even greater percentage of the country's black population). Washington DC boasts the fourth-largest African-American population in the U.S.after New York, Chicago and Atlanta. It had previously announced that it had landed digital subchannels in Chicago and in Atlanta -- at Gannett's WATL-TV -- where Bounce TV co-owner Andrew Young served as mayor from 1982-90. Network executives have moved speedily to land affiliation agreements for its 24-hour network, and within the past six months have signed up stations in numerous other cities with large African-American populations, including Philadelphia, Houston, Cleveland/Akron, San Francisco, Milwaukee, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Hartford/New Haven, Norfolk, Dayton, West Palm Beach, Birmingham, Memphis, Louisville and Richmond, VA. In a statement, Gordon Smith, president and CEO of The National Association of Broadcasters, hailed the latest agreement. "Broadcasters across America are delivering on the promise of digital television by expanding niche programming options like Bounce TV," he said. "As local TV stations reinvent our business model using DTV spectrum, we fully expect that other broadcasters will support multicast ventures like Bounce to better serve our tens of millions of viewers."

02/11/2011