• by Tom Siebert , December 7, 2006

TV One, the nearly 3-year-old network targeting African-Americans, is the fastest-growing cable network in the United States by percentage, according to Nielsen Media Research estimates.

The TV One subscriber base grew by 39% in 2006--adding 9.5 million households from December 2005 to December 2006, for a total of 33.8 million households.

"We are now in 45 of the top 50 African-American markets," says Brad Samuels, TV One's executive vice president for affiliate sales and marketing. "African-American adults want to see a channel devoted to their needs, and they come to the channel where it's been carried."

"From the advertiser standpoint, they are certainly considered a player at this point," says Monica Gadsby, CEO of Tapestry, the diversity division of Starcom MediaVest Group. "We recognize that from a penetration standpoint, they're not where BET is, but as a complement to BET, TV One offers a different kind of content: more of a family audience, as opposed to the youth audience that BET caters to."

TV One--owned by a consortium that includes primary investor Radio One, Comcast, DirecTV and several investment groups--launched in January 2004 as an adult alternative to BET, which at the time was criticized for its reliance on music videos. The TV One schedule is heavy with reruns of programs like "Amen," "227," "Good Times," and "Martin," but it also includes original programming, like "Bill Bellamy's Who's Got Jokes?"

Over Thanksgiving weekend, the channel aired its highest-rated program to date--the TV premiere of the film "Preaching to the Choir," which scored a 0.8 rating Saturday, the highest of its four showings in four days.

TVOneonline.com also had a record November, attracting more than 386,000 unique visitors and more than 2 million page views--a 400% increase over November 2005. Podcasts of the Bellamy series, as well as coverage of R&B star Gerald Levert's funeral, drove much of the traffic.

Samuels says he recognizes that the network needs to "develop better programming, deliver more specials and fans, in order to get better profile and buzz," and promises the carriage will continue to come. But he point out that TV One is already featured on eight of the top 10 cable or satellite systems, including Cox, Time Warner, Insight and Charter, in addition to investors Comcast and DirecTV.

BET remains the most popular network targeting African-Americans, which is in more than 83 million households, according to Nielsen. Another competitor, Black Family Channel, is available in over 16 million homes.