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Media

A rush to grab more ethnic viewers has Viacom’s MTV Networks looking to launch a new, older Afro-American-targeted network called Centric. Company officials say it will launch this October with 45 million subscribers, one of the bigger launches for a cable network in recent years.

Centric would complement Viacom’s venerable BET channel, which goes into 89 million homes and skews mostly to younger Afro-American viewers, in the 18-34 and 18-49 demographics.

In part, Centric intends to compete with TV One, the Comcast/Radio One-owned network, which targets 25-to-54 African-American viewers and reaches 47 million subscribers. As Viacom considered this target demo for Centric, it realized that “a perfect example would be” Barack and Michelle Obama, Scott Mills, the president of BET told The New York Times.

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